After the abrupt end of its zero Covid policy, China is currently experiencing a huge corona wave. However, there is disagreement in Germany and Europe about how to deal with this. Some call for mandatory tests for travelers from the People's Republic, others consider this exaggerated. There is also the question of whether China could become a breeding ground for more dangerous virus variants. As the Swedish Presidency announced on Wednesday after a meeting of health experts from the Member States in Brussels, it had not been possible to agree on mandatory testing for travellers from China. However, EU countries would be urged to prescribe a negative corona test before leaving for Europe, which should not be older than 48 hours.
In addition to the pre-departure tests, it is recommended that travelers from China be randomly tested for corona on arrival in the EU in the future. Positive samples should be sequenced if necessary. In addition, the wastewater from airports where machines from China arrive should be examined. There was also agreement on recommending the wearing of a medical or an FFP2 mask on board the aircraft. The decisions are not binding for the individual EU states, but are considered an important guideline.
Germany will introduce a test obligation for entry -of -all -hearting people, said Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach on Thursday. The German Entry Ordinance will be changed at short notice that travelers from China needed at least one antigen fast test when they come to Germany in the future, said the SPD politician.
Less than a month after the end of the almost three-year zero-Covid strategy, several hundred million people have already been infected with the virus in China. Hospitals are overloaded, crematoria cannot cremate the bodies fast enough. According to estimates, tens of thousands may have already died. From 8 January, the obligation to quarantine when entering China will also end. According to experts, the huge outbreak is expected to last until March or April. Exact infection figures are not available because the authorities have stopped publishing epidemiological data.
However, the EU health authority ECDC does not currently expect that the increase in the number of cases in China will have a serious impact on the epidemiological situation in the EU. On average, EU citizens have comparatively good immunity due to infections and vaccinations. The Bremen epidemiologist Hajo Zeeb assesses the situation in a similar way. He told the Science Media Center (SMC): "Tests for people entering from China would certainly show that a possibly not insignificant proportion of all those entering from there are infected. Nevertheless, in the overall view of the infections currently still present here on land, this would only be a very small part; it would certainly not trigger a new wave of infections." According to a report by the University of Basel, the variants currently dominating in China are similar to those circulating in the rest of the world. So far, no strongly deviating mutations have been known.
Development of an immune fleet variant "not particularly likely"
Isabella Eckerle, a virologist and professor at the University of Geneva, told the SMC that she does not think the development of an immune escape variant in China is particularly likely, "because China does not have high population immunity compared to the rest of the world." Of course, it is possible that a new, more worrying variant will emerge, "but it could also come from another part of the world from which we get few sequences." It would be more important to maintain funding for many research programs on Sars-CoV-2. "In order to detect altered properties of a new variant, biological characterization through experiments is required. So: How much fitter is the variant compared to others? How well does it bypass the immune response? Is there evidence of increased pathogenicity?" she said.
The epidemiologist Gérard Krause from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig also told the SMC that he personally does not consider it appropriate to introduce mandatory tests for travellers from China or other countries on Covid-19 in the current situation: "We have long been in the phase of targeted damage mitigation or we should finally be aware of this and act accordingly. Containment measures such as entry restrictions or controls are useful for a short initial phase of an epidemic or pandemic, but not anymore now.«
The Federal Association of Doctors of the Public Health Service and the Chairman of the Board of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, on the other hand, are in favour of a Europe-wide test obligation. "The infections in China are completely uncontrolled. Therefore, I think it makes sense to prescribe a PCR test obligation on entry," said Montgomery of the "Rheinische Post".
All experts agree that it is important to introduce or expand targeted variant monitoring. In some cases, the toilet water at airports is already being examined for possible new coronavarians, for example at Frankfurt Airport. This can still be intensified by analyzing the wastewater of individual aircraft, a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Health said "We would of course know at an early stage whether anything changes in the current situation". That is why it is now important that China provides better information about variants circulating there.
