Travellers from China will need a negative COVID-19 test certificate to enter from Sunday onwards, State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor announced on Thursday.
The obligation will be valid until 31 January and will apply to all direct travel from China for travellers aged 12 years and above. The test has to be taken within 48 hours before entering the country.
On Monday, the Belgian Risk Management Group concluded that a uniform decision should be taken EU-wide and decided not to impose compulsory tests for travellers from China.
However, Belgium went ahead with their decision after EU member states met to discuss a common approach towards travellers from China on Wednesday and “strongly encouraged” mandatory tests.
Entry into the territory being a competence of the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, State Secretary de Moor elaborated the measure following consultations with Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib.
Vandenbroucke confirmed that a Royal Decree would be published this weekend, a necessary step to require negative COVID-19 tests for travellers.
“The COVID crisis in China does not pose any particular epidemiological risk for us at the moment, as long as the variants we already know here are concerned,” his office reiterated on Thursday, the purpose of the tests solely being to detect possible new variants.
The Risk Management Group took two measures on Monday. First, wastewater from planes from China landing at Brussels Airport must be collected and analysed to detect new variants. This measure was also recommended to be applied EU-wide during the meeting on Wednesday. Second, travellers returning from China and having symptoms must take a test which should then be sent to a laboratory with genomic sequencing technology.
(Anne-Sophie Gayet | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
