Health Minister Mark Butler says WHO concerns prompted tests on travellers from China

The World Health Organisation’s concerns about a lack of information on China’s Covid outbreak prompted the Albanese government to impose mandatory tests on travellers.

Australia joined countries including France and Japan in imposing the mandatory testing. Picture: AFP

Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly advised against imposing mandatory Covid tests on travellers from China ahead of the Albanese government introducing them.

In a letter sent to Health Minister Mark Butler, Professor Kelly advised the government there was not “sufficient public health rationale” to require travellers coming into Australia from China to provide a negative Covid test before boarding their flight.

But Mr Butler defended the decision, saying the World Health Organisation (WHO) had flagged a lack of comprehensive information about China’s Covid outbreak.

Mr Butler said Australia was “concerned” and testing was one way it could gather more information about what was happening on the ground.

“If the WHO had said over the weekend what they said about China in relation to another country, we’d be looking at the same measures,” Mr Butler said on Tuesday.

Health Minister Mark Butler with Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly. Picture: Gary Ramage

Professor Kelly’s letter was sent to Mr Butler on December 31, a day before the health minister announced the new measures citing the uncontrolled breakout in China and potential for new variants to emerge.

Under the measure anyone entering Australia from China will have to return a negative Covid-19 test at the airport within 48 hours of boarding flights to the country.

It comes into effect on Thursday.

Professor Kelly told the government he did not believe such a measure was necessary given Australia’s high rate of vaccination, high level of community immunity due to vaccination and infection, ready access to treatment and testing and strong surveillance mechanisms including wastewater testing.

He also noted the BF.7 Omicron sub-variant that appears to be a key driver to the outbreak in China “has been present in Australia for some time, and has been superseded by other circulating sub-variants” and the hot summer weather reduces the risk of transmission.

“Based on available information, and in the absence of a specific threat from a variant with increased pathogenicity and immune escape, I do not believe that there is sufficient public health rationale to impose any restriction or additional requirements on travellers from China (including any measures available to you in the Biosecurity Act 2015),” Professor Kelly wrote in the letter.

“I discussed the situation with state and territory Chief Health Officers and public health officials from New Zealand via the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee on 30 December 2022, and there is strong consensus that implementation of any restrictions to travel from China at this time would be inconsistent with the current national approach to the management of COVID-19 and disproportionate to the risk.

“We continue to monitor the situation very closely, and are proactively engaging with international counterparts to obtain as much detailed information about the evolving situation as possible.”

While Professor Kelly advised against testing travellers from China, he recommended introducing new measures such as testing aircraft wastewater, introducing a program of voluntary testing of arrivals, expanding domestic wastewater testing and improving the national approach in following up people who test positive to Covid who have been overseas in the preceding 14 days.

The letter was published on the Department of Health and Aged Care site late Monday.

China is being pummelled by the world’s biggest Covid outbreak with hundreds of millions of people potentially infected.

It is also providing limited epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data which allows international health authorities to track emerging new variants.

The US, India, England, Spain, France, Italy, Japan and Taiwan have all imposed or are moving to introduce mandatory testing of travellers from China.