Experts in immunology and epidemiology see no cause for alarm in the recent outbreak of COVID-19 in China, but countries should remain vigilant in the coming days, they warned.
The best moment to properly analyse the situation is not now, but it will be the end of January when the Chinese New Year begins, experts told EURACTIV’s partner EFE.
Spanish Society of Immunology (SEI) President Marcos López Hoyos and Spanish Society of Epidemiology (SEE) President Óscar Zurriaga told EFE on Thursday that border controls in Spain of passengers from China are “relatively effective,” but not sufficient.
The outbreak of a new COVID-19 strain immune to the current adapted vaccines “cannot be predicted, and it is absolutely random,” they warned.
Spain is the second EU country to require travellers from China to present a negative COVID-19 test or a vaccination certificate. Italy had previously announced similar measures in response to surging infection rates in China.
Zurriaga recalled that the “relative” effectiveness of the new measures put in place had already been seen on previous occasions with the Omicron strain and the restriction of flights from South Africa to the EU, which, however, “did not prevent it from being expanded Worldwide”, he recalled.
For López Hoyos, border checks of passengers from China can be effective, but they should be carried out in a “global and coordinated manner at the level of the European Union,” because it is possible that a person may have travelled from China to another continent and then arrive in Spain or other EU country.
“By then we have already lost track of him,” he lamented.
The vaccination passport does not prevent people from becoming infected, “you have to do a PCR or antigen test,” Marcos López Hoyos stated.
For the Spanish scientist, the problem in China is that with such a high level of Incidence Rate (IR), the virus can mutate and in such a large population “there is fear that a new strain may emerge that escapes the adapted vaccines.”
(Begoña Fernández / EFE)
Source: euractiv.com
