Covid in China: the international community is trying to organize itself

A sick patient is transferred to the emergency department of Langfang Hospital in Hebei Province.

Emergency services in cities southwest of Beijing are overwhelmed.

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3 mins

Faced with the outbreak of Covid cases in China, what position should be adopted towards travelers from the Middle Kingdom?

The 27 are meeting this Wednesday in Brussels to try to adopt a common position and the WHO, the World Health Organization, has met several Chinese scientists to try to see more clearly.

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What is really happening in China with the Covid?

Question without much answer as the Chinese authorities remain silent on the extent of the epidemic outbreak.

Beijing, for example, confirmed five new deaths on Tuesday January 3 when Western experts estimate that several thousand could die from Covid every day.

The WHO, which has radically changed

, organized a meeting with experts from China.

No details have yet filtered on this meeting, but it is difficult to see how the United Nations agency would have won its case with the envoys from Beijing, reports our correspondent in Geneva,

.

For months it has been asking China to release its data on hospitalizations, intensive care admissions, deaths and the sequencing of positive tests.

In vain, so far. 

The WHO does not usually criticize its member states.

It even redoubles its vigilance when it comes to commenting on China's actions.

But one can't help noticing the annoyance of WHO officials.

Seeing the organization

and even saying that it understands the

for travelers from China is, from this point of view, a small semantic revolution.

We are far from the time when the boss of the WHO was accused of being a puppet in the hands of Chinese power. 

► To read also:

 how China went from “zero Covid” to “full Covid”

The 27 try to end the cacophony

Putting in place a common strategy to respond to the surge in coronavirus cases in China and the upcoming opening of the country's borders, after the first reactions in scattered order, is the objective of the meeting in Brussels this Wednesday after -midday.

► 

Cacophony in the EU faced with the arrival of travelers from China 

While three EU countries, France, Italy, and Spain have already unilaterally announced mandatory testing for travelers arriving from China, the whole issue of the IPCR meeting - the European system for a reaction in crisis situations - is to find a coordinated response at European level so as not to repeat the procrastination of the beginnings of the epidemic, in 2020.

Yesterday, the 27 have already made progress on the file.

“ 

 ,” assured a spokesperson for the European executive after a meeting of the EU health security committee.

There was consensus in particular around systematic Covid tests for travelers from China before their departure for Europe.

But the experts of the health committee also mentioned the imposition of the wearing of a mask on passengers coming from China, the control of wastewater from planes and increased tests with genomic sequencing in airports of arrivals in order to identify possible new variants, which worry some European countries.

Berlin advocates a coordinated European response

Karl Lauterbach has always held back with four irons in the face of the inclinations of other officials to reduce the precautionary measures against the Covid.

Today, the German Minister of Health does not see the usefulness of screening tests for passengers coming from China, relates

, correspondent in Berlin.

"All the variants observed so far are already known," said the minister before New Year's Eve.

However, he pleaded for a coordinated reaction in Europe and the establishment of a surveillance system to see if a new potentially dangerous variant arrived from China.

Other politicians in charge of health issues share this point of view.

The Christian Democrats are calling for the implementation of systematic tests for passengers arriving from China.

The federation of doctors in charge of public health in the administrations is also on a restrictive line.

The virologists questioned in the media consider them useless tests.

Covid variants in China are known to them, the German population is well protected and the approximately four Lufthansa planes each week from Beijing and Shanghai would be a drop in the bucket compared to the 400 to 700,000 infections recorded before festivals in Germany.

So many measures which could be examined during the IPCR meeting on Wednesday, a meeting which should lead to recommendations which can then be endorsed by the various Member States.

A passenger on a flight from Beijing leaves the terminal after landing in Madrid on December 31, 2022. AFP - PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU

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