EU states looking for joint stance on Covid testing for travellers from China

Member states of the European Union are trying to find a joint stance on how to treat travellers entering the borderless Schengen area from China, after Italy urged the rest of the economic bloc to bring back anti-Covid checks in response to Beijing’s rapid rollback of its previously stringent hygiene restrictions.

Italy on Wednesday brought back mandatory coronavirus tests for all airline travellers arriving from China, after reports of rising infection rates in the world’s most populous country.

More than 50% of passengers from China at Milan’s Malpensa airport in recent days tested positive for the virus, prompting the Lombardy region to impose mandatory Covid testing on arrivals from the country.

However, on Thursday Italy’s far-right premier, Giorgia Meloni, said no new concerning Covid-19 mutations had been found among those arriving so far, with about half the samples sequenced.

Meloni nonetheless insisted that requiring Covid tests for all passengers from China was “only effective if it is taken at the European level’’, noting that many people arrive in Italy on connecting flights through other European countries.

Meloni’s deputy and transport minister, Matteo Salvini, tweeted that “Italy cannot be the only country to carry out anti-Covid checks at airports for those arriving from China”, urging such measures to be applied “throughout Europe”.

Earlier this month China performed a U-turn on its management of the Covid-19 pandemic, reversing tough restrictions and allowing the virus to rapidly spread across a country that has not been exposed to the virus since the initial outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

While there have been no news of new variants developing in China, there have been concerns that the country’s authoritarian government would be slow to share such information with the rest of the world, leading the US, Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan to introduce testing requirements for Chinese travellers.

Officials in Berlin, Paris and Brussels were more cautious over sounding the alarm over the latest developments in China.

“We are watching the situation in China with great care,” a spokesperson for the German health ministry said on Wednesday. “Currently we see no indication that the Chinese outbreak is developing a more dangerous mutation that would give us reason to declare it a virus variant region.”

“From a scientific point of view, there is no reason at this stage to bring back controls at the borders,” said Brigitte Autran, head of the French health risk assessment committee Covars.

Autran, who advises the government on epidemiological risks, told French Radio Classique on Thursday that the situation could change at any time but that for now there were no signs of worrying new variants in China.

The European Commission said on Thursday that the BF.7 Omicron variant prevalent in China was already active in Europe and that its threat has not significantly grown.

“However, we remain vigilant and will be ready to use the emergency brake if necessary,” the EU’s executive arm said in a statement.