EU to require travellers from China to take pre-departure Covid tests

The European Union is expected to require all travellers from China to take pre-departure Covid tests in response to surging levels of the virus, after Beijing hastily abandoned strict controls.

France, Italy and Spain already require pre-departure tests on travellers from China and have been urging other EU member states to follow suit. EU officials meeting later on Wednesday in the “integrated political crisis response” format are expected to issue a recommendation of mandatory testing, despite warnings from Beijing of retaliation.

“The overwhelming majority of countries are in favour of pre-departure testing,” a European Commission spokesperson said. “These measures would need to be targeted at the most appropriate flights and airports and carried out in a coordinated way to ensure their effectiveness.”

Stella Kyriakides, the European commissioner for health, said experts meeting in the EU’s health security committee on Tuesday had “converged on action” including pre-departure testing, intensified monitoring of plane wastewater and increased surveillance of Covid-19 in the EU.

“Unity remains our strongest tool against Covid,” she wrote on Twitter.

The EU-wide approach – likely to be issued as a recommendation to member state governments – follows similar measures from more than a dozen countries, including the US, the UK, India, Australia and Japan.

China’s government has warned of unspecified “countermeasures” in response to the entry restrictions that it says lack scientific basis. “We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the Covid measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity,” the foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.

The EU’s tougher entry requirements on travellers from China comes despite the conclusions of the bloc’s disease control agency that a surge in the number cases in China was not expected to have a major impact on Covid-19 in Europe.

In a statement on 3 January, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said the variants circulating in China were already in the EU and “as such are not challenging for the immune response” of citizens in the EU or broader European Economic Area, which includes Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The ECDC said European populations were protected by higher population immunity and relatively high vaccination rates.

EU countries last week rejected calls from Italy to impose mandatory Covid tests on travellers from China entering the border-free Schengen zone. But the debate has shifted amid growing international concern about under-reporting of the virus in China.

China reported five new Covid deaths on Tuesday, bringing the official death toll to 5,258, very low by global standards.

The death toll is widely believed to be much higher. Researchers at the UK data firm Airfinity have said about 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from Covid. Cumulative deaths in China since 1 December were likely to have reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6m, Airfinity said last week.

The ECDC reported that cases reached a record peak in mainland China on 2 December, but added that the subsequent fall probably reflected reduced testing, resulting in fewer infections being detected. “There continues to be a lack of reliable data on Covid-19 cases, hospital admissions, deaths as well as intensive care unit capacity and occupancy in China,” the EU agency said.

The World Health Organization has called on Chinese scientists to share detailed data on viral sequencing and hospitalisations, deaths and vaccines.

The EU has also offered China free Covid vaccines, an offer that appears to have been rejected. Mao did not give a direct reply, but told Reuters China’s vaccination rate and treatment capacity continued to rise and its supplies were “adequate”.

The Guardian

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