Italy mandates Covid-19 tests for Chinese travellers

Italian officials on high alert as half of all passengers arriving in Milan on plane from Beijing test positive for Covid-19.

Masked travellers are seen at Malpensa Airport in Italy. Picture: Getty Images

Italy has imposed mandatory Covid-19 tests on Chinese travellers after nearly half of all arrivals from China entering through Milan’s Malpensa airport tested positive to the virus.

On Christmas Eve, a planeload from Beijing, comprising 120 passengers, returned 62 positive cases.

Italian officials are on high alert fearing a fresh wave of Covid-19 variants now that the Chinese population is allowed to travel following President Xi Jinping’s dramatic loosening of his country’s zero-Covid policy.

Hong Kong is also relaxing many of its Covid-19 restrictions.

Italy, considered Europe’s “ground zero” for the pandemic in early 2020 because of the links between Chinese textile workers and Italian factories in the north of the country, was the first western country to impose what was then considered unthinkable: a nationwide lockdown.

On Wednesday, Italian health minister Orazio Schillaci said all passengers coming from China would require mandatory Covid-19 tests, whether they were in transit or visiting Italy. He said swabs would also be sequenced to understand if there were any new variants of Covid-19 in circulation.

“The measure is essential to ensure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population,” he told the Italian parliament.

Testing at Milan airport in recent days had shown almost one in two arrivals from China were testing positive for Covid-19, news agency Ansa reported.

Lombardy regional councillor Guido Bertolaso reported that 35 of 92 passengers, or 38 per cent, had tested positive on the first flight to be tested which had arrived from Shanghai into Malpensa. The second planeload, originating in Beijing, recorded 62 positives from 120 passengers (52 per cent).

One of the main international airports, Fiumicino in Rome, was now conducting tests on flights from China as of Wednesday, with testing being rapidly rolled out to cover all Chinese-originating flights.

Italy’s Spallanzani Institute, which deals with infectious diseases, called for a boosting of testing of Chinese arrivals across all of Europe.

“It would be better if the co-ordination of surveillance took place at European level,” the institute said in a statement.

“Such an intervention would serve to monitor the emergence and intercept early the arrival of new variants, either as new evolutions of Omicron or as new variants other than Omicron, and to prepare possible selective quarantine measures.

“China’s problem must be tackled with timeliness and international cohesion.’’

It noted that the data was “creating fear in the international community, including the scientific one”.

The institute said China’s high percentage of non-vaccinated people, in conjunction with ineffective vaccines, would lead to exponential growth in infections and could generate the selection of a new, much more immune-evasive and transmissible variant.

Japan, India and Taiwan have also implemented Covid-19 testing for Chinese arrivals amid fears that millions of Chinese will travel for the first time in three years during the Chinese New Year, which starts on January 21.