The European consultations will continue on Wednesday. The crisis meetings follow in the wake of the easing of the strict ‘zero Covidpolicy in China. The EU fears that Chinese travelers will bring new corona variants to which the current vaccines are not resistant. In addition, there is great doubt about the reliability of the official Chinese corona figures.

In recent days, several EU countries had introduced measures for travelers from China on their own after an initial European consultation failed to reach agreement on which measures should be introduced. The US, India and the UK have already decided that people arriving on a flight from China must undergo a mandatory test.

“Politically motivated”

According to the Chinese government, the travel restrictions imposed by various countries on people traveling from China are “politically motivated”. The government has previously warned that there will be “possible consequences”, and says it is “strongly opposed to attempts to manipulate epidemic prevention and control measures for political purposes”.

China’s most recent Covid update, dated December 24, reported fewer than 5,000 cases. However, according to some analysts, more than two million people would be infected every day, and this will increase to four million new infections per day this month.

The World Health Organization has therefore already urged China to do more real time information, and a State Department spokeswoman said on Tuesday that China was willing to “improve communication with the world.”

Free vaccines

China also rejected an offer from the European Union on Tuesday to supply an undetermined number of Covid-19 vaccines, saying it has “sufficient supplies”. Official records show that China has administered more than 3.4 billion doses, the vast majority of which were from China Sinovac. The government has so far insisted on using only Chinese-made vaccines – which have been proven to be less effective against the omikron variant than mRNA vaccines developed in the West.