The UK, Spain and France have joined other countries imposing new checks on travelers from China as Covid-19 cases rise after Beijing scrapped pandemic restrictions.
Countries such as the United States, Japan, India and Italy had already announced mandatory Covid tests for visitors from China as Fears have grown over new strains – although EU officials have resisted Italian calls for bloc-wide restrictions.
Scientific advisers to the UK government had previously minimized the need for new testing measures given the lack of evidence of new variants emanating from China.
But millions are contracting infections every day in China following its abrupt abandonment draconian zero-Covid policy.
With British Tory MPs calling on the government to act, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday night authorized new measures under which visitors from the Chinese mainland will require a negative Covid-19 test before travelling.
France, which had also previously said there was no urgency to change policy given the limited number of arrivals to Europe from China, also changed its position on Friday evening. It will now require a negative Covid-19 test before travel and for people on direct flights from China to wear masks, its government has announced.
Earlier today, the Spanish government said it would require proof of vaccination or a negative result. coronavirus test of people arriving from China.
Madrid did not say when it would put the measures into effect, but said they would come before January 8, when China will fully reopen its airports for international travel.
The unilateral responses have brought back memories of the chaotic days of March 2020, when the global spread of the virus became evident and national governments moved at dramatically different speeds to impose border controls and nationwide shutdowns.
Italy, Spain and the UK were among the hardest hit European countries in the early months of the pandemic.
Explaining Spain’s decision, Health Minister Carolina Darias said: “The evolution of infections in China is worrying and the difficulty of assessing the situation given the scant information currently available.”
On Thursday, the EU’s health and safety committee, made up of officials from member states, had agreed that “the coordination of national responses to serious cross-border health threats is crucial”, but did not approve Italy’s appeal for the block to test all air arrivals from China.
In a letter to the bloc’s health ministers seen by the Financial Times, Stella Kyriakides, EU health commissioner, said there was “broad consensus that EU countries should act in a coordinated if we want the measures to be effective”.
But she called for “science-based” responses, such as monitoring airport sewage, and said ministers should be sure to step up their genetic sequencing programs to detect any new coronavirus variants.
“If a new variant of the Sars-Cov-2 virus emerges – whether in China or the EU – we need to detect it early so that we are ready to react quickly,” she said.
“Reliable epidemiological data or test data for China is quite scarce” and “general vaccination coverage in China is low,” Kyriakides warned.
The commissioner also noted that vaccines made in China were not valid as proof of vaccination under the European system, although Spaniard Darias said Madrid would accept proof of inoculation with any product recognized by the EU. World Health Organization.
The WHO has approved widely used Chinese-made vaccines, including those from Sinovac and Sinopharm.
The commission has already said that the BF.7 Omicron variant, popular in China, is already present in Europe.
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