European Union government health officials will hold talks on Wednesday on a coordinated response to the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, EU president Sweden announced on Monday, after talks in December ended without a decision on the issue, Reuters reported.

China coronavirusPhoto: Andy Wong / AP – The Associated Press / Profimedia

At a similar meeting held online on December 29 between more than 100 representatives of EU governments, EU health agencies and the World Health Organization, Italy urged the rest of the EU to follow its lead and test travelers from China for COVID as Beijing prepares to lift travel restrictions on January 8.

But other EU 27 member states said they did not understand why it was needed, despite China’s decision to ease pandemic restrictions amid a surge in new infections.

“An integrated policy meeting on crisis response is planned for Wednesday, January 4, for the latest information on the COVID-19 situation in China and to discuss possible coordinated EU measures,” said a spokeswoman for Sweden’s EU presidency. .

A big concern for Europe is the emergence of new variants of Covid

European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in a letter to EU governments on December 29 that they should immediately consider expanding activities on genomic sequencing of COVID-19 infections and wastewater monitoring, including at airports, to detect any what new options, given the growing number of infections. in China.

Kyriakides said the EU needed to be “very vigilant” because there was little reliable epidemiological and testing data for China, advising EU health ministers to assess their current practice of sequencing the coronavirus genome “as an immediate measure”.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said last week that it is not currently recommending action against people arriving from China.

The variants circulating in China are already available in the European Union, EU citizens have relatively high vaccination rates, and the potential for imported infections is low compared to the daily infections in the EU that health systems are currently dealing with, he said.