The European Commission (EC) has convened this Thursday the Health Security Committee to evaluate possible coordinated measures in the face of the rebound in coronavirus cases in Chinaafter Italy announced restrictions for travelers from that country, specifically, imposing a mandatory test. The United States joined Italy, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan on Wednesday. to these preventive measures. Australia is also considering imposing restrictions. France will not, for the moment, put special controls on travelers from China and the United Kingdom rules it out.
“In light of the current situation of COVID-19 in China, the Commission has convened the Health Security Committee this morning to discuss with Member States and European Union (EU) agencies possible measures for a coordinated approach” community spokesman Daniel Ferrie told Efe.
In October, the EC lifted the restrictions on free movement within the EU and travel to the Twenty-seven in view of the improvement in the epidemiological situation. However, it remained a “emergency break” that could be activated if necessary to reintroduce restrictions in a coordinated way.
According to Ferrie, the BF7 omicron variant of the coronavirus, prevalent in China, is already present in Europe and “has not grown significantly.” “However, we remain vigilant and we will be prepared to use the emergency brake if necessary“, he concluded.
China has felt like a shot at the decision of some countries to test citizens from the country and has demanded “fair and scientific measures” from countries that have imposed restrictions on the arrival of travelers from the Asian country. The US has already responded. The measures are due to the increase in infections and a lack of adequate and transparent information from China, including the genomic sequence of the strains.
What has happened in China?
After lifting the confinement in Wuhan (2020), in China they closed the external borders tightly and they lived two years (2020 and 2021) with freedom within the country, while in the West confinements and restrictions of all kinds were chained while the massive vaccination campaign began in 2021. In China, vaccines, based on attenuated viruses and not messenger RNA, are much less effective. To this is added that for two years (2020 and 2021) they were not in contact with the virus, so there is no natural immunity.
Around February 2022, the omicron “entered”, apparently through Hong Kong and the wild confinements in Shanghai and other large cities, entire buildings closed and fenced off, workers locked up in their companies, as happened in Apple and all kinds of abuses by the Chinese communist government. In October there was a fire in a residential building and the firefighters could not gain access to put it out because the fences prevented them from doing so. Then the population rebelled with riots and protests, harshly repressed by the Chinese dictatorship. Finally, the Chinese government relents and abandons covid zero policy with a bang. Result: thousands of daily cases in a population not naturally immunized and little vaccinated, with little reinforcement.
The zero covid policy failed because during the last two years they did not take the opportunity to vaccinate or to have better health care.
What is the risk now? Basically two: that China collapses economically and does not affect the West, such as in the supply of medicines and that a mutation occurs to some type of worse variant, which is a risk that has always been there: the more infected, the more possibility of mutation , which does not always have to be worse, but….
