EU recommends pre-flight testing for passengers from China

The European Union on Wednesday recommended that member states carry out pre-flight testing on passengers traveling from China.

It comes after a week of talks involving EU health experts, and comes from the EU's Integrated Political Crisis Response (IPCR) group.

Along with passengers having to test negative for COVID-19 before traveling, the IPCR also recommended that passengers wear face masks on flights to and from China.

Sweden, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, issued a statement late on Wednesday listing a set of all the recommendations that the EU members agreed on. It said the measures will be reviewed in mid-January to "assess the situation."

Over the past week, member states have been implementing their own restrictions on travelers arriving from China

Reactions to restrictions on visitors from China

Beijing has slammed the new rules, such as testing requirements in Italy and France, as "discriminatory" and vowed to impose countermeasures. As the EU was fine-tuning its approach, Chinese government spokesperson Mao Ning said: "We sincerely hope that all parties will focus on fighting the epidemic itself, avoid the politicization of COVID.''

Medical groups and airlines have also complained that the disjointed approach is untenable. International Air Transport Association Director General Willie Walsh said that it was "extremely disappointing to see this knee-jerk reinstatement of measures that have proven ineffective over the last three years."

"Research undertaken around the arrival of the omicron variant concluded that putting barriers in the way of travel made no difference to the peak spread of infections. At most, restrictions delayed that peak by a few days," he said.

Some EU health officials have also noted that the variants now heavily affecting China have already been present in Europe for sometime.

Despite this, the European Union appeared determined to impose some sort of restriction. Sweden issued a statement saying that "travelers from China need to be prepared for decisions being taken at short notice.''

On a trip to Portugal, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it was essential for the EU to have a united response to China's unprecendented wave of infections.

What is the current COVID-19 situation in China?

In December, China became one of the last countries on Earth to drop its "zero-COVID" policy, which had been in place since the pandemic began in 2020. The policy became known for its extremely strict quarantines, often of entire neighborhoods or cities. The administration of Premier Xi Jinping finally dropped the plan after nationwide protests throughout the fall, resulting in soaring numbers of infections and deaths.

After the initial wave began, China announced that it would be counting cases and fatalities differently, resulting in data that international health officials have criticized as opaque.

Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, a UK-based expert on epidemiology and global health, told DW that "in a global crisis, we need rapid sharing of information. And, without that, it's very hard for us to sort of respond globally in a coordinated manner."

She said she didn't think that the European Union's current patchwork approach would do much good. "I think while it's really important to surveil the variants that might be emerging or growing within China, this sort of patchy pre-departure testing is unlikely to make a difference in terms of slowing the import of any new variant unless there are also domestic measures in place," he said. 

Gurdasani also said that, with Lunar New Year approaching, the spread of COVID-19 across China and the emergence of new variants is highly likely.

WHO calls for transparency from Beijing

Also on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized Beijing's "very narrow" definition of COVID deaths, which does not include people who die of COVID alongside another underlying condition. It also only allows for a death to be listed as caused by the coronavirus if the person died of respiratory failure, despite scientists knowing that COVID-19 has many other symptoms. Therefore, only 22 deaths have been registered since early December.

"We believe that the current numbers being published from China under-represent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, and particularly in terms of deaths," WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told reporters.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that his team was conducting talks with their counterparts in Beijing

"We continue to ask China for more rapid, regular, reliable data on hospitalization and deaths, as well as more comprehensive, real-time viral sequencing," he said.

es/rt (AP, dpa)