Berlin, Brussels Despite a massive corona wave in China, EU states have been unable to agree on mandatory testing for travelers from the People’s Republic – but strongly recommend it. As the Swedish Council Presidency announced on Wednesday after a meeting of health experts from member states in Brussels, EU countries are urged to require travelers from China to Europe to have a negative corona test no more than 48 hours before departure.
There was agreement, among other things, to recommend the use of a medical mask or FFP2 on board the aircraft. The decision is not binding on individual EU states, but is considered an important guideline. In addition to mandatory testing, it is now recommended, among other things, that travelers from China be randomly tested for Corona when they arrive in the EU. Positive samples should be sequenced if necessary. In addition, waste water from airports where machines from China arrive must be examined.
According to medical experts, mandatory tests are not necessary. “These demands are urgent work. It’s not clear what you want to achieve with this,” said Johannes Knobloch, head of hospital hygiene at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf. “We will definitely have imports from China. Testing can reduce the number of these introductions, but cannot prevent them. totally.”
These introductions are of little concern to physicians. Because, unlike China, the corona virus in Europe had the opportunity to change for years and thus bypass the population’s immune protection. “Dangerous mutations often prevail when there is also evolutionary pressure,” said virologist Jana Schroeder. “Currently there is no such thing in China.” Doctors speak of an “immune runaway” when a virus changes in such a way that existing protection through vaccination or infection is less effective. This includes the omicron variant.
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Few samples in Germany
Schroeder doesn’t expect this effect to become even stronger with a new variant: “Immunity from vaccination and recovery is already very broad, protection against serious illness and death will likely be good with other variants as well,” she said. “The probability of transmission on Omikron is also very high, there is little room for improvement.”
Conventional tests are inadequate to detect a dangerous variant that nevertheless occurs. This requires sequencing, which is performed less frequently in Germany than in Britain, for example.
>> Read here: China is opening up fast – but the corona situation is still tense
“Even in Germany, there is still a lack of representative samples that can be used to reliably register infections and quickly identify new variants,” said Claudia Denkinger, head of the Department of Infectious Medicine at the University Hospital of Heidelberg. Mandatory testing decisions are politically motivated. “Epidemiologically, they don’t make sense,” she said.
The federal government seems to see it similarly. One is primarily interested in setting up monitoring for virus variants, a spokesman for the health ministry in Berlin said. The common variants in China are still the ones circulating in Europe.
One way of detecting variants of the virus is monitoring wastewater, as is already being practiced at Frankfurt airport, for example. Of course, this can still be expanded, for example by examining wastewater from individual flights, the spokesperson said. However, he also stressed that the government is fighting for uniform European regulation in the EU. Several countries have announced that they will require test proof at departure. In Italy, even an entry test is mandatory.
Family at Beijing Airport
Several countries around the world have already tightened entry requirements for people from China.
(Photo: AP)
These regulations angered Chinese authorities. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs threatened consequences. “We don’t believe that the measures that some countries have taken against China have any scientific basis,” she said. Some of these measures are disproportionate and simply unacceptable. “We strongly oppose the use of Covid measures for political purposes and will take appropriate measures in response to different situations based on the principle of reciprocity.”
In fact, even after the end of the quarantine obligation, all travelers are still obliged to take a test in China. “All passengers traveling to China are required to take a PCR test 48 hours before departure to China,” says the Chinese embassy’s website about entry requirements from January 8. Only those with a negative test result can travel to China.
Meanwhile, hospitals in Germany are still very busy due to other infections and some tests are being cancelled. “At the moment, patients at risk must be especially careful not to get sick,” said Cihan Celik of the Darmstadt Clinic. “It might make sense to require proof of vaccination when entering the EU.” Vaccination can prevent serious cases of diseases that would further burden the health system.
However, the Chinese vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm are not yet approved in the EU. Until now, the government in Beijing has rejected vaccines from Western countries.
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