MILAN, Jan 4 (Class Editori) — EU member states are preparing for coordinated checks on passengers arriving from China, including possible mandatory testing before departure, to ensure that the sudden halt of its zero-Covid-19 policy does not undermine the countries’ efforts to end the pandemic.
With this decision, expected to come today, EU member states would follow in the footsteps of US authorities by tightening controls on arrivals from China ahead of Beijing’s lifting of travel controls expected in the coming days. Several EU member states, including France, Spain, and Italy, have already announced controls on arrivals from China.
Last month Beijing said it would remove almost all remaining restrictions on quarantine and Covid-19 testing for travelers entering the country, which triggered an increase in demand for airline tickets to enter and leave China. In the same month, the Government decided to cancel many of the country’s zero-Covid-19 policies introduced three years ago.
Yesterday, a group of health experts from member states met with authorities in Brussels for the second consecutive week to discuss the situation. The EU Crisis Management Group will meet today to decide about the adoption of coordinated measures, although it will ultimately be up to the member states to decide what measures to impose. After the meeting last night, the European Commission’s Health spokesman said that Brussels will recommend measures today including wearing a face mask on flights from China, increased sewage monitoring on incoming flights, genomic surveillance at airports to check for new Covid-19 variants, and increased follow-up on travelers. The spokesman said the possibility of mandating pre-departure testing for people planning to travel to the EU from China would also be discussed, saying a majority of member countries would be in favor.
Last week, the US decided to require a negative test result for Covid-19 from people arriving from China, Hong Kong, and Macau. China criticized these measures as unacceptable and politically motivated for its citizens and warned about countermeasures. For much of the past three years, China has imposed strict Covid-19 testing and quarantine on foreign nationals traveling to the country as part of a broader package of measures to prevent infections from being imported.
Those policies were largely discontinued last month, and new data on the increasing cases in the country are largely not being released. During a closed-door meeting, yesterday, the World Health Organization asked Chinese scientists to offer more details on the country’s Covid-19 situation. EU officials said yesterday there was no cause for concern thanks to the mainland’s early warning and response measures still in place, no evidence of new variants, and high levels of immunity and vaccination in Europe, which has been the epicenter of the crisis in the pandemic’s first year.
(Source:Class Editori)
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