Negative Covid tests to be made mandatory for travellers from China
Travellers from China will be required to have negative Covid tests before flying to the UK amid fears of a new variant emerging from the Chinese surge in cases.
Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has decided to take a precautionary approach to the explosion of Covid in China and the decision by Xi Jinping, its president, to lift the block on international travel from Jan 8.
Senior scientific advisers had said the reintroduction of travel tests was not justified because Europe is well protected and there is no sign yet of a new variant.
But it is understood Tory MPs and ministers have come under pressure from the public, which overwhelmingly backs the reintroduction of travel restrictions on arrivals from China.
The US, Japan, Italy, Spain, India, South Korea and Taiwan have also already announced tests for travellers from China, following claims that the country is suffering as many as one million new infections per day following the end of its zero Covid policy.
There are also concerns that China’s secretive approach to the Covid outbreak means any emergence of a new variant could be hidden from scientists.
It means that, for the first time since all Covid restrictions were lifted in February, travellers from China will only be allowed to fly into the UK if they test negative within 48 hours of departure.
There will also be surveillance in the community, with anyone taking a PCR test – such as those in hospitals or care homes – being asked if they have recently travelled to China. Their samples will then be fast-tracked for sequencing in labs to detect any new variants potentially introduced from the country.
It follows calls by Steve Brine, the former health minister and chairman of the Commons health committee, for the Government to introduce restrictions because China cannot be trusted to provide accurate data on the scale of the outbreak or variants.
“China is such a secretive society we know their data is withheld and unreliable,” he said. “We have every right to over not underreact. Public confidence is such that we know the lesson of two years ago was that time is of the essence. The public are a bit bemused that we are in this place, seemingly not having learned.”
On Friday, China was accused of withholding Covid data after it emerged that it had shared fewer than 1,000 virus samples with the international scientific community over the past month.
The concerns have been fuelled by data, seen by The Telegraph, which shows that since Nov 29 the Chinese government has uploaded just 940 virus sequences to Gisaid, a global pathogen database that allows scientists to identify and track emerging Covid variants.
These sequences detail the genetic composition of each infection and reveal whether the Covid virus has obtained dangerous mutations. If this data is limited, it could blindside the rest of the world should a new variant arise, experts say.
China has also only reported 644,671 cases to Gisaid, according to data publicly available on the platform – a tiny proportion of the 250 million infections estimated by Chinese health officials to have occurred in the 20 days to Christmas.
By contrast, the UK has shared 7,325 Covid sequences with Gisaid over the past month from 138,041 cases, and Denmark has published 8,723 sequences out of 31,629 reported cases.
Earlier this month, the US and World Health Organisation both urged Beijing to be more transparent in sharing data on case counts, disease severity, hospital admission figures and other health statistics that have been made widely available by other nations.
Amid the uncertainty, Malaysia announced on Friday that it would screen body temperatures of all inbound travellers, including those from China, as part of measures to prevent a further Covid outbreak.
Zaliha Mustafa, the country’s health minister, said it would also be introducing tests for Covid on wastewater from aircraft arriving from China.
