Its compulsory pre-departure Covid tests for China Passenger in EU
Key Takeaways:
- The European Union has “strongly encouraged” its citizen nations to mandate COVID-19 testing before takeoff for all passengers departing from China.
- Several EU countries, including France, Italy, and Spain, already require Chinese travellers to present the negative test results before boarding.
- A UK-based company called Airfinity that collects health data estimates that COVID-19 kills about 9,000 people in China daily.
The European Union has “strongly encouraged” its member countries to require COVID-19 testing for all travellers arriving from China before takeoff.
Despite a wave of new infections that have overrun Chinese hospitals and funeral homes, Beijing plans to relax travel restrictions for its citizens on January 8. This recommendation was made on Wednesday.
France, Italy, and Spain are among the EU nations that already demand travellers from China show the results of the negative test before boarding.
Still, following a week of discussions between health experts, the European Council refrained from approving that all 27 member states enact such restrictions.
Instead, the EU president urged European nations to “strongly encourage the introduction of the necessity for a negative COVID-19 test taken no more than 48 hours before departure from China, for all passengers departing from the Member States from China.”
The bloc advised face masks for all travellers going to and from China and stated that its decision was made “considering the need for sufficient, reliable data.”
Additionally, member states were “encouraged” to test passengers at random and wastewater from planes coming from China for hazardous variants that are uncommon in Europe.
Chinese passengers are already being tested upon arrival in Italy and France, while Austria announced that starting the following week, it will test wastewater from all flights from China.
China, which has threatened the EU with “countermeasures” if it imposes travel restrictions across all member states, is likely to be upset by the EU’s suggestions.
According to government officials in Beijing and medical professionals in Europe, there is no urgent need for any broad travel restrictions, as the coronavirus variants emerging from China are already common there.
The European Centre for Disease Control further stated that healthcare systems can handle daily infections in the EU and that EU citizens have relatively high vaccination rates.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which speaks for 300 airlines globally, voiced strong criticism of nations that already demand negative COVID-19 tests for visitors from China on Wednesday.
IATA Director General Willie Walsh said, “It is extremely unfortunate to see this knee-jerk reinstatement of indicators that have proven to fail over the last three years.”
Barriers in the way of travel had no impact on the peak infection spread, according to research conducted around the introduction of the Omicron variant. Restrictions merely postponed that peak by a few days, he claimed.
Director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated on Wednesday that he understood why several nations recently imposed restrictions on travellers from China given the absence of outbreak information from the Chinese government.
China reported five additional COVID-19 fatalities on Tuesday, bringing the country’s official COVID death toll—extremely low by international standards—to 5,258.
During a press briefing, the WHO’s emergency management director, Mike Ryan, stated that the numbers currently available from China underrepresented hospital admissions, patients in intensive care units, and “particularly” deaths.
According to Airfinity, a health data company based in the UK, about 9,000 people in China are likely dying from COVID-19 every day.
