An "overwhelming majority" of the EU's 27 member countries want passengers coming from China to be systematically tested for Covid before departure, the European Commission said on Tuesday.

The consensus recommendation emerged from a meeting of EU health ministry officials held Tuesday in Brussels.

A crisis meeting to be held Wednesday on the issue will decide what coordinated measures will be applied across the bloc.

The gatherings were called in the wake of China deciding to lift its "zero Covid" policy, which has sparked massive demand for flights to other parts of the world by Chinese citizens and residents who had been grounded for nearly three years.

The European Union fears a sudden influx of passengers from China could bring Covid variants that may be able to evade current vaccines.

There are also concerns that China's data on infections is incomplete, partial and insufficient.

"The overwhelming majority of countries are in favour of pre-departure testing," a commission spokesman said after Tuesday's meeting.

EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the officials also agreed to recommend stepped-up monitoring of wastewater from flights and at airports to detect traces of Covid, and for member states to boost surveillance.

She emphasised the need for EU "unity" at the meeting to take place on Wednesday.

Several EU countries including France, Spain and Italy have already imposed testing requirements on arrivals from China pending a bloc-wide approach.

Beijing has reacted angrily to the increased restrictions, which are also being applied by the United States, Japan and Australia.

China has only recorded 22 Covid deaths since December and has dramatically narrowed the criteria for classifying such deaths -- meaning that Beijing's own statistics about the unprecedented wave are now widely seen as not reflecting reality.

Data compiled by the World Health Organization, upon which the EU relies, shows no fresh Covid figures from China for over a week.

Earlier Tuesday, the commission said an "offer stands" for the EU to provide Covid vaccines and expertise to China.

A spokesman said Kyriakides had repeated the vaccine offer recently and that any supply of them was dependent on Beijing's reaction.

Many EU countries have a surplus of mRNA vaccines -- especially the one made by BioNTech/Pfizer -- that scientific studies have shown to be more effective against severe Covid than the inactivated-virus ones China has developed and uses.

Experts sceptical that China travel curbs will be effective
Paris (AFP) Jan 3, 2023 - International measures on travellers from China will likely have little effect on containing Covid, health experts said Tuesday, pointing to a surging variant in the United States that may pose a larger threat.

More than a dozen countries have imposed testing requirements on visitors from China, citing concerns about a lack of transparency in Beijing's infection data and the risk of a new variant of the virus emerging.

China -- which is experiencing an explosion of cases after lifting its long-standing zero-Covid measures -- has branded the restrictions "unacceptable" and vowed to take countermeasures.

- Why the new restrictions? -

China has officially recorded just a handful of deaths from the virus in recent days -- but with the end of mass testing and the narrowing of criteria for what counts as a Covid fatality, those numbers are no longer believed to reflect reality.

Hospitals and crematoriums have been overwhelmed, prompting global concern over the surge in cases.

Countries who have imposed testing measures, including the US and France, raised fears that the huge number of potential cases among China's 1.4 billion population could allow the virus to mutate into new variants.

Several of the countries have announced PCR tests on arrivals from China, which when sequenced could allow authorities to track possible new variants.

- Are they justified? -

The EU's health agency ECDC last week called bloc-wide tests on travellers from China "unjustified" given Europe's high levels of immunity from vaccination and prior infection.

However France, Italy and Spain have already started requiring tests, and EU nations will hold a crisis meeting on the subject on Wednesday.

French epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik told AFP that such measures were "justified if an unprecedented wave sweeps through the country: it would be difficult to let a plane land with one out of every two people positive without doing anything."

But he added that for such measures to be useful in Europe, "they should at least be applied throughout the Schengen area" which comprises 27 EU states.

Dominique Costagliola, another French epidemiologist, was more critical.

Given that France is currently reducing its sequencing capacity on its home turf, testing arrivals from China seems little more than a "communication" exercise, she told AFP.

"It is not very useful apart from giving the impression that we are doing something," she said.

Even France's Covid expert committee, which recommended the government impose Covid screenings, said the measure was unlikely to delay the spread of infections or variants from China.

"The restrictions imposed on South Africa during Omicron's emergence in late 2021 had very little impact on the outbreak's evolution in Europe," the committee pointed out last week.

- Where is the new variant threat? -

In recent months a range of different Omicron subvariants have been competing for dominance across the globe.

Chinese health experts said recently that BA.5.2 and BF.7 are most prevalent in Beijing, both of which have already been overtaken by more transmissible subvariants in Western nations.

So even if they are introduced to Western nations from China, "border controls will not have much impact on these variants," said Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the UK's University of East Anglia.

Rather than looking towards China, many virus experts have their attention on the US and the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.

Since mid-December, XBB.1.5 has jumped from under 10 percent of all national cases to over 40 percent, according to the US CDC's variant tracker.

Hunter said that "the main future concern for the UK at present is the XXB.1.5 variant, which was probably introduced into the UK from the United States and is now increasing".

- Can the variants be kept out? -

Tom Wenseleers, an evolutionary biologist at Belgium's Leuven University, tweeted that random sampling of arrivals from across the globe "would probably be more useful than just checking Chinese travellers".

"Can we keep new variants out?" asked Oxford University's James Naismith.

"This has not been possible to date in the UK and there is no evidence this is plausible for the UK," he said.

While there are concerns about XBB.1.5, US virologist Angela Rasmussen tweeted that it was not an "apocalyptic 'super variant'."

She pointed to recent research indicating that a booster dose of a new bivalent vaccine would produce neutralising antibodies against XBB.1.5.

Austria to monitor wastewater of flights from China
Vienna (AFP) Jan 3, 2023 - Austria will start monitoring wastewater from aircraft from China and in top Chinese tourist attractions as Europe mulls restrictions for those from the Covid-19 hit country, the government said Tuesday.

As Beijing has decided to lift its "zero Covid" policy, the European Union fears a sudden influx of passengers from China could bring Covid variants that may be able to evade current vaccines.

"Starting next week, Austria will examine samples from the wastewater from aircraft from China," Austria's health ministry said in a statement.

It added wastewater from the sewage plant of the picturesque village of Hallstatt -- a top Chinese tourist destination -- would also be analysed.

This is in addition to wastewater in the cities of Vienna and Salzburg, which is already being monitored as part of a national programme launched at the beginning of last year.

"With this, some places frequently visited by tourists from China are regularly examined," the ministry said.

"This makes it possible to discover new virus variants, even if visitors from China have not entered the country with direct flights."

The European Commission said on Tuesday that an "overwhelming majority" of the EU's 27 member countries wanted passengers coming from China to be systematically tested for Covid before departure.

The consensus recommendation emerged from a meeting of EU health ministry officials held Tuesday in Brussels.

A crisis meeting to be held Wednesday on the issue will decide what coordinated measures will be applied across the bloc.

EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the officials also agreed to recommend stepped-up monitoring of wastewater from flights and at airports to detect traces of Covid, and for member states to boost surveillance.

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