Is the UK risking new degrees of COVID without taking action on Chinese travellers? | UK News

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To test or not to test for COVID people coming from China? That is the question officials in the UK government are pondering as the East Asian country opens up to international travel.

There are fears that the end of nearly three years of strict COVID measures in the country of 1.4 billion people could lead to a massive spread of the disease around the world.

So what is the best approach? Here is a guide to the current situation.

What is the UK’s response?

For now, the UK government is taking a wait-and-see approach. It is keeping the situation “under review” after previously stating there were no plans to introduce mandatory COVID-19 testing for those arriving from China.

Other countries have gone further by requiring a negative COVID test result no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau (as the US will do) or test people upon arrival (which is what happens in countries like Italy).

So what did Italy find when it tested passengers from China?

The main airport in the Italian city of Milan began testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai on December 26 and found that almost half of them were infected.

Are we risking missing out on new variants by not testing people from COVID hotspots?

The United Kingdom, which was led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson when the epidemic broke out in 2020, was criticized for its handling of the public health crisis, after it was slow in detecting the arrival of infections and delayed with closing compared to other major countries.

The biggest concern for scientists and officials is new variants entering the UK that could be more virulent and more contagious than those already circulating.

Professor Roland Kao, an expert in epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, told Sky News: “At the moment there is no clear indication that there are any new variants emerging from China.

“But the problem we have is that we have so little data from China that we don’t really know what’s going on.”

Image: Professor Roland Cao

He added, “Every time we receive a different variant coming into the country from any source or even originating within the country, as happened in the past, we get significant spikes in the number of cases.

“These increases in cases eventually lead to a significant increase in the number of people in the hospital. And we need to be aware of these things, and do our best to prepare for them. Although, frankly, there is not much under the current circumstances that we can do. “

Health Secretary Will Cowens added: “The main thing to look for is a new variant, and there is no evidence of a new variant that is not already circulating in the UK – but we are keeping the situation under review.”

How can we track new variants entering the UK?

Professor Cao believes international arrivals should undergo lateral flow tests.

He said: “If you have a positive test, do a PCR test so we can get the information we need to understand what’s going on. It’s not going to prevent the infection from spreading.”

“We’re going to get very few that way, but it will give us the data to understand what’s going on. Understand what’s coming into the country, and whether we should worry about new variants emerging or coming from somewhere else.”

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Former health secretary Lord Bethel urged the government to follow Italy in offering COVID tests to visitors from China.

The Tory counterpart, who has been in office during the pandemic, said this strategy would allow for confidence in results and for genetic testing to understand if any new variants are emerging.

“I think there are two different reasons for testing — one is the American approach of pre-testing to slow the spread. And that’s something that’s hard to do because containing a virus like COVID is like trying to stop the sea.

“But what Italians do is post-flight monitoring of those coming to Italy in order to understand if there are any emerging variables and … the impact of the virus on the Italian health system,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“This is a reasonable thing to do and something the British government should seriously consider.”

How serious is the spread of COVID in China right now?

UK-based health data company Airfinity estimated around 9,000 people were likely to die each day from COVID-19 in China – nearly double last week’s figure, with daily infections expected to reach 3.7 million in mid-January.

China officially reported one new coronavirus death on Wednesday, down from three on Tuesday, but foreign governments and many epidemiologists believe the numbers are much higher, and more than a million people could die next year.

China said it only counts deaths of COVID patients from pneumonia and respiratory failure as related to COVID.

The official death toll of 5,246 since the pandemic began compares to more than 1 million deaths in the United States. Hong Kong, under Chinese rule, has recorded more than 11,000 deaths.

China has rejected criticism of its statistics as baseless and politically motivated attempts to smear its policies. She also downplayed the risks of the new variants, saying she expected the mutations to be more virulent but less severe.

China’s borders have been nearly closed to foreigners since early 2020, shortly after the coronavirus first appeared in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, but it announced it would cancel the quarantine of incoming travelers from January 8.

The reopening raises the prospect of Chinese tourists returning to shopping streets around the world, once a $255bn (£211bn) a year market globally.

What is the current situation of COVID in the UK?

Covid infections increased in England and Scotland earlier this month, while the trend in Wales and Northern Ireland is uncertain.

1.4 million people in private homes in the UK are likely to have tested positive for coronavirus in the week ending 9 December.

This was up from 1.1 million in late November but down from the 2 million weekly infections in early October.

Estimates published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) give a snapshot of what was happening in the UK at the start of December, when coronavirus began to spread further through the population.

“We are definitely better off than we were a year, two years ago,” said Professor Cao.

He said the numbers of people now vaccinated are lower than in previous waves but still “relatively high”.

“The number of people in hospitals is going up, people with COVID. You can add in the number of people in hospitals with the flu, with other infections like RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), and what that results in is a really high number of people, and it’s a real strain on the capacity of NHS.”

Meanwhile, the UK’s Health Security Agency will stop publishing COVID modeling data next month after nearly three years.

Increasingly sparse updates will hinge on the virus’s R number from January 6, 2023, with it deemed “no longer necessary” thanks to vaccines and treatments.

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