Since China moved away from its zero-Covid policy, the virus has been spreading across the country. This worries many countries that are tightening entry restrictions for travelers from the Far East - much to Beijing's displeasure.
China has criticized the test requirements introduced for passengers from its country and has threatened countermeasures against the affected countries. "We believe that the entry restrictions imposed by some countries against China are not scientifically based and that some exaggerated practices are unacceptable," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a briefing.
China is firmly against attempts to manipulate the Covid measures for political purposes, the spokeswoman stressed. Countermeasures will be taken based on the principle of reciprocity.
In China, the coronavirus has swept across the country after restrictions that had been in place for much of the pandemic were abruptly eased. Countries such as the US, UK, India, Japan and several European states have subsequently announced stricter measures for travelers from China to curb the spread of potential new variants. Travelers from China are therefore required to have a Covid test before boarding their flight. The USA justified the step by saying that there is a lack of transparent epidemiological and viral genome sequence data in China.
The German epidemiologist Klaus Stöhr, on the other hand, does not consider testing travelers from the People's Republic to be effective in preventing the spread of new virus variants. "The monitoring is not such a bad idea, it is certainly scientifically interesting, but in practice you would have to see how this variant behaves in the population," said the former head of the World Health Organization (WHO) influenza program on Deutschlandfunk.
It is about which properties have changed in addition to the genetic ones, whether other age groups are also affected or whether the immune protection is undermined. "All of this takes a certain amount of time and then the variant has already slipped through. Even testing can't prevent that," said Stöhr.
The Greens health expert Janosch Dahmen considers random checks of travelers from the People's Republic to be useful. "It would make sense, for example, to use random tests to identify mutation variants at an early stage and to expand variant monitoring," said Dahmen in the ARD "Morgenmagazin".
A general obligation to test, on the other hand, only makes sense if it is decided at a common European level. There is currently no evidence that the virus that is currently rampant in China is more dangerous than the virus variants in Europe. "From everything we know at the moment, it's the same coronavirus of the same omicron strains that are common there as here," said Dahmen.
The EU countries are continuing their deliberations today on a joint response to the massive corona wave in China. According to the EU Commission, representatives of the national health ministries had already agreed on a “coordinated approach” on Tuesday. The vast majority of EU countries therefore support corona tests before leaving China for the EU.
