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Covid: at Malpensa obligation to swab for those arriving from China

2022-12-27T19:38:27.896Z


Tokyo imposes the same measure. Bassetti: 'It's worse than Wuhan' (ANSA)


The easing of anti-Covid restrictions in China and the stop to quarantine which will come into force on January 8, a few days before the Chinese New Year, the most important holiday of the year, when millions of people gather, risk turning into a global disaster they will be traveling again to reunite with family and friends within the country or abroad after a three-year hiatus.

Already half an hour after the announcement, travel sites were stormed, with the concrete possibility of causing a new wave of Covid in the rest of the world with a very high risk of new variants.

And some countries such as Japan and India are already activating the first protective measures.

Compulsory molecular swab at Malpensa for those arriving by flight from China.

A banner on the airport website informs passengers of the new provision which will be valid until 30 January, with a reference to the safe travel website where it states that "the Lombardy Region has given indications to ATS INSUBRIA, the reference for the airport of Malpensa, to subject all passengers/operators from China to a molecular screening swab for Covid-19".

The explosion in the number of infections and deaths since the beginning of December, when the strict containment measures were abolished following the wave of people's protests, is difficult to measure also due to the stop to the dissemination of data decided a few days ago by the Beijing authorities.

But the numbers circulating are alarming.

According to the British research company Airfinity, there are currently over a million new cases and at least 5,000 deaths a day.

And the situation is likely to get even worse.

Models developed by Airfinity suggest between 1.3 million and 2.1 million deaths as a result of the current wave of Covid in China.

The company estimates 3.7 million infections per day in mid-January in areas where cases are currently rising fastest,

The virus travels on people's legs, virologists from all over the world obsessively repeated in the darkest months of the pandemic marked by the lockdowns.

And now, with the suspension of mass tests and consequently the disease tracking system, the liberalization of the movement of the Chinese, the consequences are obvious.

Yesterday, half an hour after the National Health Commission announced it was reopening to travel, data from travel platform Ctrip showed searches for cross-border destinations had increased 10-fold: among the most popular Macau, Hong Kong, Japan , Thailand and South Korea. Data from another platform, Qunar, showed that 15 minutes after the news broke, searches for international flights increased sevenfold, with Thailand, Japan and South Korea topping the list.

Just Japan today announced a defense strategy.

By decision of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, starting Friday travelers from China will be forced to take a swab and the positives will have to undergo a 7-day quarantine.

Tokyo is also considering limiting the number of flights from China, Hong Kong and Macao.

India, for its part, had already decided that those arriving from China, as well as from other countries, must show a negative test. 

Source: ansa

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