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Covid-19 in China: EU recommends testing wastewater at airports and planes

2023-01-05T11:29:46.072Z


Brussels has “strongly encouraged” its member states to ask travelers from China to test negative within 48 hours, but this recommendation is not the only one.


It is also one of the European recommendations, in the face of the major Chinese epidemic wave of Covid-19.

On Wednesday January 4, the European Union (EU) urged its 27 member states to “

test the wastewater from airports hosting international flights and that of planes arriving from China

”.

This is in addition to other recommendations issued on Wednesday, such as the requirement for a negative test within 48 hours on departure from China.

It is now up to each Member State to implement these measures.

For now, Belgium is the only European country to have implemented this.

It is a question, [here], of isolating the waste water from flights from China

,” reports the Belgian daily

Le Soir

.

If we expand on an international scale, Australia, Canada and even Malaysia analyze the wastewater from planes arriving from China.

According to some American media, the United States could follow.

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Covid-19: should travelers arriving from China be tested?

For its part, France does not use this measure in planes and airports.

Starting this Thursday, January 5, travelers from China will be required to present a negative test within 48 hours of departure and random PCR tests are performed upon arrival.

Epidemic monitoring

Concretely, samples of wastewater are collected when the plane lands.

Then these are sent to laboratories where traces of Covid-19 are searched for.

Once the virus has been detected, its genome is sequenced in order to identify the variant in question.

And therefore to identify a possible unknown variant in Europe.

It is also possible to collect wastewater from an entire international airport, but this would not allow us to say whether a possible new variant comes from China or not.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Omicron BA.5.2 and BF.7 subvariants "would

account for 97.5% of all infections

" in China since May 1. December.

They are both already circulating in Europe and in France.

” READ ALSO –

Covid-19: what if the “worst variant” was in fact in the United States?

This is the main interest of such a measure.

But, “

these samples [also] represent a window on what is currently happening in China

”, indicates to AFP the epidemiologist and director of the Institute of global health of the University of Geneva Antoine Flahault, in particular in a context of "

doubts about the transparency and timeliness of the Chinese government's official health information

".

Not an epidemic brake

Like the tests at the borders, it is not a question of concretely curbing a possible epidemic resumption in Europe.

"

Knowing that 30% to 50% of passengers from China are currently infected is useful information in the absence of reliable figures on the incidence of Covid-19 in China currently

,

"

adds Antoine Flahault to

AFP

.

This measure has the advantage of being simpler from a logistical and passenger point of view.

The lobby of European airports, ACI Europe, notably pleaded this week for wastewater to be analyzed, instead of a test for passengers.

” READ ALSO –

In China, everything is played on the exit of the Covid

Limit, however: the analysis of wastewater would only detect the presence of the virus in passengers who went to the toilet on the plane or at the airport.

Similarly, this waste water must be recovered, transferred to the laboratory and then examined.

Which takes longer than for border tests.

“Once we have the info, what do we do with it?

Do we call back all the people [who were] on the plane?

, asks virologist Vincent Maréchal, co-founder of the Obépine wastewater tracking network, with

AFP

.

"It's interesting, but already late"

.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-01-05

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