The European Union’s Well being Safety Committee on Thursday known as for the bloc’s member states to coordinate and roll out joint measures towards COVID-19 as China reopens its borders.
The committee — an off-the-cuff advisory group on well being safety at European degree — mentioned following an emergency assembly on the COVID-19 state of affairs in China that “coordination of nationwide responses to severe cross border threats to well being is essential.”
“We have to act collectively and can proceed our discussions,” it added.
The assembly got here after Italy, which was hit exhausting by the primary wave of the pandemic in early 2020, ordered obligatory COVID antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travellers coming from China.
Well being Minister Orazio Schillaci mentioned on Wednesday that “the measure is important to make sure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus to be able to defend the Italian inhabitants.”
The US additionally requires a unfavorable COVID-19 check for travellers from China.
Beijing began loosening its zero-COVID coverage and strict journey quarantine guidelines after protests swept by the nation in late November following the loss of life of not less than 10 folks in a constructing beneath quarantine in Urumqi within the western Xinjiang area.
The easing has led to an explosion in circumstances throughout China the place belief in locally-developed vaccines is low. Western vaccines such because the mRNA jabs by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna will not be authorised by the nation’s well being authorities.
EU well being ministers agreed in early December to return to a pre-pandemic method to free motion and journey with none COVID-19 associated measures. However they stored the chance to activate an “emergency brake” in a coordinated method if the epidemiological state of affairs worsens.
“The BF7 omicron variant, which is prevalent in China, is already current in Europe and has not considerably grown. Nonetheless, we stay vigilant and will probably be prepared to make use of the emergency brake if obligatory,” a Fee spokesperson instructed Euronews.
The top of the World Well being Organisation (WHO) forecast earlier this month that COVID-19 might cease being a worldwide well being emergency in 2023 because the variety of deaths from the virus continues to dwindle.
“At the moment (in 2021), COVID-19 was killing 50,000 folks every week. Final week, lower than 10,000 folks misplaced their lives,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus instructed reporters.
“We’re hopeful that in some unspecified time in the future subsequent yr, we can say that COVID-19 is now not a worldwide well being emergency.”
“The standards for declaring an finish to the emergency will probably be among the many matters of dialog when the Emergency Committee meets in January,” he mentioned.
He nonetheless warned that the virus is “right here to remain” and that international locations “might want to study to handle it” and renewed his name for vaccination and therapy to be made extra available worldwide.
“Just one in 5 folks in low-income international locations has been vaccinated; entry to diagnostics and life-saving remedies for COVID-19 stays unacceptably unaffordable and unequal; the burden of post-COVID-19 situation is just prone to improve; and huge gaps in surveillance stay, which is a weak spot not just for detecting new variants of COVID-19, but in addition for monitoring the unfold of different infections,” he mentioned.
He additionally urged “China to share the information and conduct the research that now we have requested, to higher perceive the origins of this virus.”
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