BRUSSELS – The European Union on Wednesday “strongly encouraged” its 27 member states to require a negative Covid-19 test for travelers boarding flights from China to the region amid a surge in coronavirus cases in the country and Beijing’s lifting of draconian travel restrictions.
The bloc’s recommendation, an attempt at a unified policy, came after three major European tourist destinations – France, Italy and Spain – as well as Britain introduced tests and other requirements for travelers from China.
The EU move would bring back a pandemic-era harsh measure for travelers that the tourism and airline industries had hoped were a thing of the past.
Countries in the European Union “are strongly encouraged to introduce the requirement for all passengers departing from China to Member States to have a negative Covid-19 test taken no more than 48 hours before departure from China,” it said. advice.
The statement came from a committee made up of health officials from the 27 countries, as well as health experts and advisers. It follows an announcement from the United States in late December that travelers from China must have a negative test result within two days of their departure.
The EU panel, which has met regularly during the pandemic to set policy for the entire bloc on travel requirements, pledged to meet again later this month to assess the situation.
“Member States have agreed on a coordinated precautionary approach in light of Covid-19 developments in China, especially given the need for sufficient, reliable data and the relaxation of travel restrictions by China from January 8,” the statement said. the Commision.
Understand the situation in China
The Chinese government rejected its restrictive “zero Covid” policy, which had sparked mass protests that posed a rare challenge to the Communist Party leadership.
The move brings a sense of déjà vu to Europe, where the worst of the pandemic has largely been brought under control after more than two million deaths, economic chaos and, ultimately, an extensive and costly vaccination campaign.
It also threatens to further strain EU-China relations, already strained by China’s implicit support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
The Beijing government has denounced the new Covid testing requirements imposed by other countries on travelers arriving from China as unscientific or “excessive” and has threatened to take countermeasures.
Many experts and the World Health Organization have long said that travel restrictions are not a particularly effective means of curbing the spread of the coronavirus. And the introduction of strict requirements for travelers can be logistically cumbersome, discriminatory and politically toxic.
Yet WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week that such measures were “understandable” given China’s lack of transparency over its Covid data.
“In the absence of comprehensive information from China, it is understandable that countries around the world are acting in ways they believe can protect their populations,” Tedros wrote on Twitter.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said on Tuesday that reported infections in China had fallen from an all-time high on Dec. 2, but attributed the drop to a “lower number of tests conducted, resulting in fewer infections.” be detected.”
“There remains a lack of reliable data on Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths, as well as Intensive Care Unit (ICU) capacity and occupancy in China,” it added.
The European Union has traditionally been a popular destination for Chinese tourists. And member states counting on a return of Chinese tourism welcomed the government’s announcement in Beijing that it would ease travel restrictions after that market had been virtually closed for three years, sparking a surge in foreign travel bookings.
This Sunday, for the first time since early 2020, the Chinese government will drop quarantine rules for visitors from abroad and ease restrictions on inbound flights.
It also resumed processing passport applications from Chinese citizens for overseas tourism. Outbound flight bookings jumped nearly 300 percent on Dec. 27, when the government announced the changes to its border restrictions, according to data from Trip.com Group, a travel booking company.
“After more than two years of strict Chinese corona measures, the last major obstacle to unlimited travel freedom has fallen,” Austrian tourism minister Susanne Kraus-Winkler said at the end of December.
“For European and Austrian tourism, this heralds the return of the main Asian source market for the coming tourist seasons,” she added.
But the European Union is divided on how to deal with the growing number of cases in China. The main concern for European authorities was the potential for a new variant to emerge in China, but experts warn that forcing visitors from China to test or isolate would not stop the spread of such a variant worldwide, should it emerge .
In Italy, sequencing of positive samples of the coronavirus taken from visitors arriving from China has so far recorded no new variants, health officials there said.
And the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, noting on Tuesday that no new variants had been registered in China so far, said EU citizens had high levels of immunity and vaccination against the known variants in circulation, meaning that the rise in infections was “not challenging the immune response of” people in Europe.
Wednesday’s EU advice nevertheless asked governments to conduct random airport tests on travelers arriving from China and to examine the waste from planes landing in Europe from China for the presence of coronavirus variants.
Alexandra Stevenson contributed reporting from Hong Kong.