Euractiv.com with AFP Est. 2min 01-01-2023 Passengers walk along a Happy New Year greeting at the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China, 1 January 2023. The UK and France have joined the USA, Australia, Canada, Spain, Italy, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, Malaysia, Taiwan and India in imposing curbs for incoming travelers from China as the country continues to experience a surge in COVID-19 with no figures available as China's National Health Commission (NHC) stopped publishing data on 25 December 2022. [EPA-EFE/MARK R. CRISTINO] Euractiv is part of the Trust Project >>> Print Email Facebook X LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram EU countries will meet next week to discuss a joint response to travellers from China amid concern over the country’s explosion of Covid cases, incoming EU presidency holder Sweden announced Saturday (31 December). “Sweden is seeking a common policy for the entire EU when it comes to the introduction of possible entry restrictions”, the Swedish government said in a statement. Stockholm, which takes over the rotating EU presidency on 1 January, said it had called a meeting of the Council’s crisis management mechanism IPCR for Wednesday. “It is important that we quickly get the necessary measures in place”, it said. Beijing has abruptly ended its draconian “zero Covid” policy, resulting in an explosion of infections in the country, which has prompted several EU member states to impose Covid tests on travellers from China. France, Italy and Spain this week imposed Covid testing requirements. Germany, while saying it saw no need to impose routine tests, is seeking a coordinated system to monitor variants across European airports. EU urges more checks for COVID variants given surge in China The EU should consider immediately scaling up genomic sequencing of COVID-19 infections and monitoring of wastewater, including from airports, to detect any new variants given the virus surge in China, the bloc’s health chief said. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), one of the EU’s health agencies, said Thursday that systematic screening of travellers was currently “unjustified”. It cited the level of immunity in Europe and the presence on the continent of the same variants as in China. The European branch of the International Airports Council said on Saturday that imposing restrictions for travellers from China country was “neither scientifically justified nor risk based”. The federation, which represents more than 500 airports in 55 European countries, said the identification of possible new variants that could emerge in China could be detected with genomic sequencing of airport waste water analysis, without the need to test travellers. Read more with Euractiv France, Britain, Spain impose Covid tests on travelers from ChinaFrance, Britain and Spain on 30 December joined a growing list of nations imposing Covid tests on travelers from China, and the World Health Organization pressed Beijing to be more forthcoming on real-time data amid an explosion of cases there.
