France and the UK have joined Spain and Italy in requiring travelers from China to provide a negative COVID-19 test result before boarding flights.
France said on Friday that the tests will have to be carried out less than 48 hours before departure and will be compulsory on direct flights from China and flights with a stopover, with random tests carried out on arriving passengers.
Positive tests will be sequenced to look for new variants, the government said.
Meanwhile, British media have reported that the country will require travelers leaving China for Britain to also provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test before boarding.
London and Paris have become the latest governments to impose restrictions on arrivals from China, where coronavirus cases have risen. Earlier on Friday, the Spanish government announced new COVID-19 regulations for passengers arriving at the country’s airports from the Asian country.
Travelers from China will need to test negative for COVID-19 or prove they have been fully vaccinated against the disease, Spanish Health Minister Carolina Darias told a news conference.
She added that Spain would coordinate at a high level with other EU member states to adopt a common policy while pushing for a review of the current conditions that must be met by travelers seeking to obtain the so- saying EU digital COVID certificate.
The new measure comes after the European Union’s Health Security Committee met on Thursday to discuss the bloc’s strategy to mitigate the spread of the virus amid an influx of visitors from China after Beijing lifted most of its travel restrictions.
Italy, which had already imposed on-arrival testing for all air travelers from China, called for the measures to be extended to the whole of the EU, warning that they risked being ineffective if implemented piecemeal by only some countries in the bloc.
But the committee, which is made up of officials from health ministries across the bloc and chaired by the European Commission, said it believed an EU-wide introduction of mandatory COVID-19 screenings for travelers from China was currently “unwarranted”.
Meanwhile, Germany has said it is seeking a coordinated system to monitor variants at European airports, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Friday.
With such a system, new variants of the coronavirus can be detected and appropriate action taken quickly, the minister said, adding that there was “not yet a need” for routine testing of passengers arriving from China because all the variants currently observed are already known.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said “higher population immunity” in the EU and “earlier emergence and subsequent replacement of variants currently circulating in China” meant that the surge in infections should not affect the block.
“We remain vigilant and will be ready to use the emergency brake if necessary,” added the ECDC.
Any decision taken by the committee, which met frequently during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe to coordinate policies, would only be advisory.
Each EU member state is free to develop its own policies, but the body’s aim is to agree on a common line and apply it across the bloc.
Portugal said it saw no need for further restrictions, while Austria highlighted the economic benefits of Chinese tourists return to Europe.
“Discriminatory” restrictions condemned
Outside the EU, the scale of the outbreak in China and doubts over official data have prompted countries like the United StatesIndia, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan to impose their own new travel rules on Chinese visitors.
Other countries that have joined in imposing such restrictions include Malaysia, Australia and the Philippines.
Signaling Beijing’s dissatisfaction with the measures, Chinese state media said on Thursday that COVID-19 testing requirements imposed in response to a growing wave of infections in the country were “discriminatory”.
“The real intention is to sabotage China’s three-year effort to control COVID-19 and attack the country’s system,” state-run tabloid Global Times said in an article published late Thursday.
The article, which slams the restrictions as “unfounded” and “discriminatory”, marks the clearest pushback yet against restrictions that are slowing China’s reopening.
After keeping its borders all but closed for three years, imposing a strict lockdown and relentless testing regime, China abruptly reversed the trend of living with the virus on Dec. 7 after widespread protests against zero-COVID rules.
The lifting of restrictions gave way to a wave of infections that swept across the country, overwhelming hospitals and funeral homes.
China, a country of 1.4 billion people, reported one new death linked to COVID-19 on Thursday. The figure matches that recorded the day before – numbers that do not reflect the experience of other countries as they ease virus restrictions.
The official death toll in China is 5,247 since the start of the pandemic, compared to more than one million deaths in the United States. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million people, has reported more than 11,000 deaths.
Foreign governments and many epidemiologists believe the numbers are much higher and more than a million people could die next year.
China said it only counts COVID patient deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as COVID-related.
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