The UK could soon see required negative Covid-19 tests for passengers arriving from China, as cases soar across the Eastern country.
Reports emerged that China could be seeing up to a million new cases each day has sparked global fears over the potential of new variants landing.
Ministers announced they were reviewing the situation, as Beijing announced plans to begin reissuing passports and visas to those heading overseas.
Read more: Covid testing travellers arriving into UK from China 'under review' amid soaring cases
The Mirror reports that it will become the third European country after Italy and Spain to impose restrictions for fliers from China, joining other nations including the US, Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan. Italy urged the EU to impose rules across the bloc after it saw more than half (52 per cent) of passengers on a flight from China test positive under its new measures.
It comes after the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the screening of travellers from China would be 'unjustified' as the surge was 'not expected to impact' the EU. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had previously said the situation was 'under review' but it marks a sharp turn in policy.
It emerged yesterday that PCR tests from people who have recently travelled to China will be fast-tracked to labs to detect any new variants in the UK. Anyone who takes a PCR test, which is mainly people in hospitals or care homes, will be asked if they have recently been to the country.
Concerns have been rising since Beijing said it would reopen its borders next week. Rishi Sunak’s party had so far been split on whether to introduce measures, however pressure appeared to be mounting to impose rules.
Some Tory MPs had called for a more robust response from the Government, even as the chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, Professor Andrew Pollard, said the imposition of travel restrictions was unlikely to stop variants reaching the UK.
It is understood that the Government has moved to align with the US, in part due to concerns about the lack of reliable Covid-19 data from China. The move is expected to be precautionary and temporary, with the hope that China will improve its Covid-19 surveillance.
Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, believes the imposition of travel restrictions is unlikely to stop variants reaching the UK.
He said on Friday morning: "Trying to ban a virus by adjusting what we do with travel has already been shown not to work very well. We have seen that with the bans on travel from various countries during the pandemic."
He also told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "The important thing is that we have surveillance that when a virus is spreading within our population here in the UK or Europe we are able to pick that up and predict what might happen with the health systems and particularly the more vulnerable in the population."
Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood called for the testing of 'all passengers regardless of nationality of all incoming flights from China'.
He told LBC: “Do we want to take a risk after all that we've been through? Why hasn't COBRA met to come to the same conclusion?”
Tory MP David Davis similarly told the radio station he thought testing travellers from the country was a 'pretty sensible requirement' and a 'small price to pay for a very significant advantage'.
"If somebody turns up with the next virulent variant from China, we want to have processes in place - I think the Government should certainly consider it and I would ideally implement it," the former cabinet minister said.
China’s Covid wave has been blamed on a number of factors including its zero-Covid policy as well as the type of vaccine it used. The health commission has recorded only six Covid-19 fatalities this month, bringing the country's official toll to 5,241.
That is despite multiple reports by families of relatives dying.
China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official Covid-19 toll, a health official said last week. That unusually narrow definition excludes many deaths other countries would attribute to Covid-19.
Experts have forecast 1 to 2 million deaths in China through the end of 2023.
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