BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union nations are fine-tuning a coordinated response to China’s COVID-19 crisis on Wednesday and are zeroing in on travel restrictions that might upset each Beijing and the worldwide airline industry.
China has already vehemently rejected travel restrictions that some EU nations have began to impose and has warned of “countermeasures” if such actions must be expanded in coming days.
Yet on Wednesday, EU Commission spokesman Tim McPhie said that the “overwhelming majority of nations are in favor of” imposing testing of passengers from China prior to departure. The EU nations were in search of an official stance on the difficulty later within the day.
The Chinese government and European health experts have said there isn’t a pressing need for any blanket restrictions on travel for the reason that coronavirus variants emerging from China are already prevalent in Europe.
On Wednesday the International Air Transport Association, which represents some 300 airlines worldwide, lent its powerful voice to the protests.
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“It is incredibly disappointing to see this knee-jerk reinstatement of measures which have proven ineffective during the last three years,” said IATA Director General Willie Walsh.
“Research undertaken across the arrival of the omicron variant concluded that putting barriers in the way in which of travel made no difference to the height spread of infections. At most, restrictions delayed that peak by a couple of days,” Walsh said.
After threatening countermeasures on Tuesday, Chinese government spokesperson Mao Ning said Wednesday that “we sincerely hope that every one parties will deal with fighting the epidemic itself, avoid the politicization of COVID.”
Still, the EU seems bent on taking some form of joint motion to make sure incoming passengers from China don’t transmit any potential latest variants to the continent. Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, said in an announcement that “travelers from China have to be prepared for decisions being taken at short notice.”
Scared of being caught unawares like on the outset of the worldwide pandemic in early 2020, the EU Integrated Political Crisis Response group is now slated to make a choice later Wednesday.
In addition to pre-departure testing, EU nations are prone to agree on special testing of wastewater in planes coming from China to see if it incorporates dangerous variants that should not common on the continent yet.
Over the past week, EU nations have reacted with a chaotic cascade of national measures to the crisis in China, disregarding an earlier commitment to act in unity before anything.
Italy was the primary EU member to require coronavirus tests for airline passengers coming from China, but France and Spain quickly followed with their very own measures.
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