The EU is debating a bloc-wide response to the sudden end of China’s zero-containment policy as world capitals scramble to tackle rising infections in the country.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s new prime minister, called on Thursday for the EU to follow Rome’s move to test all air arrivals from China for coronavirus, as member state representatives met for urgent talks on a common approach.
Meloni said Italy’s mandatory testing announced on Wednesday would be “ineffective if not followed at the European level”. She added: “We want Europe to move in this direction.”
The European Commission convened a meeting of the EU Health and Safety Committee, made up of officials from member states, to “discuss the Covid-19 situation in China and possible measures to be taken in a coordinated manner”.
“Coordination of national responses to serious cross-border threats to health is critical,” the commission said after the meeting concluded. “We need to act together and we will continue our discussions.”
The huge rise in Covid cases in China and the influx of international travel bookings from the country has already led the US to require negative test results for new arrivals from China in addition to moves by Italy and other countries.
The sudden reimposition of similar travel restrictions lifted in Western countries for most of the past year is the latest reflection of Beijing’s decision to roll back its draconian zero-Covid policies that have sparked a wave of coronavirus infecting tens of millions of people in China every day.
Shares fell in Asia and Europe on Thursday as investors worried about the impact of the surge on the global economy.
Italy, which said 52 percent of passengers on a post-Christmas flight from China to Milan tested positive for the coronavirus, wrote to the commission in its push for a bloc-wide policy on Chinese arrivals. The EU’s Schengen area of free travel means there are no restrictions on people moving around most of the continent.
Orazio Schillaci, the country’s health minister, said Italy will use genetic sequencing of positive test results to determine whether new variants are emerging in China. There are concerns that any new strain could pose a greater health threat than the variants already in circulation, for which the vaccines used in the West offer good protection.
Any EU decision will only be advisory to member state governments, although the Health and Safety Committee was crucial in sharing information and agreeing joint approaches during the peak of the pandemic in Europe.
After Thursday’s meeting, the French health ministry said it was seeking to act in coordination with its European counterparts. It added that the meeting highlighted the need for a coherent EU strategy, as well as more data and further work on measures to protect people and inform travellers.
But it added that “at this stage, the number of Chinese travelers to Europe is limited and will remain so for several weeks while China’s reopening measures move in and take effect.”
The governments of the Nordic countries, Germany and the United Kingdom also said they had no current plans to follow Italy’s lead or were awaiting further information.
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Norway and Finland are not considering imposing any conditions on arrivals from China, as there is already a significant amount of Covid infections in the Nordic countries and few travelers from the Asian nation at this time of year, according to health authorities.
“It’s pointless,” Jari Jalava, an infectious disease expert at the Finnish health authority, told state-run Yle TV.
Germany’s health ministry said it was “monitoring the situation closely and coordinating closely with our international partners”. Spokesman Sebastian Gülde said: “So far the health ministry has no indication that in the context of the outbreak in China any variant of concern has emerged compared to the variants currently circulating in Germany.”
Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome, Richard Milne in Oslo and Guy Chazan in Berlin
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