PARIS (Reuters) – The European Union’s health security committee, meeting on Thursday to assess the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic in China, stressed the need for the Twenty-Seven to “act in a coordinated manner”. without, however, deciding on new measures.
This body, which brings together representatives of the Ministries of Health of the Twenty-Seven and European health agencies under the leadership of the Directorate General for Health of the European Commission, has simply chosen to “continue the discussions”, a sign of divergences in the community level.
The recent lifting of health restrictions in China, at the origin of an explosion of contaminations by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus raising fears of the emergence of new variants, does not justify restoring border controls, estimated Thursday French experts.
“On a scientific level, there is currently no reason to reinstate specific border controls (…) but of course this can change almost from one day to the next”, declared Thursday on Classic radio immunologist Brigitte Autran, president of the Committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks (Covars).
“Border screening has never prevented a virus from entering” a territory and such a measure would only make sense on a European scale, not on a national scale, Brigitte Autran then underlined on France Inter. .
“The possible test would not be a brake on the entry of the virus. There is no brake on the entry of the virus: the only brake on the entry of the virus is not to come”, she noted.
An opinion shared by Professor Bruno Lina, virologist from the International Center for Infectiology Research in Lyon, and also a member of Covars.
A “POLITICAL” QUESTION
“The question seems to me more political than scientific,” he explains in an interview published in Thursday’s edition of Les Echos.
“Reported to the entire French population, which today records 440 infections daily per 100,000 inhabitants, a few dozen Chinese arriving per day is marginal! It does not present any excess risk”, he observes.
Not to mention that such screening would not concern people who have recently arrived from China but who have stayed in another country before arriving in France or Europe, explains this specialist.
Even if the information from China is “fragmented”, there is no “particular concern” and at this stage, “the situation is under control” without the appearance of new worrying variants in China, explained Brigitte Autran.
According to the information available, “the variants circulating in China are all from the Omicron family and are all variants that have circulated in France, therefore (against which) we have acquired immunity”, she specified on France Inter. .
For Bruno Lina, the fear of seeing new dangerous variants appear “is a fantasy”.
“The most likely hypothesis is that in China, the virus will not experience any significant short-term evolution,” he explains in Les Echos.
And if it seems inevitable that the virus will evolve after having infected a large number of people, “the return to a very dangerous or even deadly virus as in 2020, when we know virology, we know that it will not happen. We will always towards a virus which gains in transmission and loses in virulence”, he underlines in the financial daily.
THE UNKNOWN CHINESE NEW YEAR
Faced with the unprecedented epidemic outbreak observed in China since the abandonment of the “zero COVID-19” policy at the beginning of December under the pressure of growing popular protest, several countries – including the United States, Japan, India or Italy – have reinstated the obligation to present a negative screening test to travelers from China.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday asked the government for “appropriate measures” to protect the French and to look at “actions at both national and European level”, we learned from the Elysée.
In Italy, Council President Giorgia Meloni pleaded at a press conference on Thursday for the EU to follow Italy’s example and impose systematic screening on travelers arriving from China.
Milan airport authorities reported that nearly half of passengers from Beijing and Shanghai tested on arrival on Wednesday were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
A UK government spokesman said on Thursday that the UK was not considering at this stage reintroducing screening tests, or any other protocols, for people arriving in its territory from China.
China Daily reports in its Thursday edition that China’s rural areas are working to boost their health and medical capacities ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, the equivalent of Christmas in the West for Chinese people, who are enjoying it. to reunite with their families or go sightseeing abroad.
The Chinese New Year begins on January 22, and the authorities are concerned about the health consequences of a massive mixing of the population between January 7 and February 15.
(Written by Myriam Rivet, edited by Matthieu Protard and Sophie Louet)