EU officials are “strongly” recommending that all member states insist on negative Covid tests from Chinese arrivals before travel.
Travel in and out of China becomes easier from Sunday as part of the rollout of the “Zero Covid” policy.
China is currently seeing an increase in Covid cases, with reports of overflowing hospitals and cemeteries.
Some EU countries have already introduced testing – despite earlier advice that it was “unfair”.
Wednesday’s recommendation for negative tests came from the EU’s Integrated Political Crisis Response Group (IPCR), a body made up of officials from the EU’s 27 governments.
He also suggested that:
- All passengers on flights to and from China wear face masks
- Random testing of flights from China be introduced, and
- Wastewater monitoring be conducted at airports.
The recommendation came a day after the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, said an “overwhelming” number of member states supported restrictions on Chinese immigration.
France, Spain and Italy have already introduced testing – but others, such as Germany, were monitoring the situation. England, outside the EU, requires pre-flight testing on arrivals from China from Thursday.
Despite the recommendation, it is not known whether an EU-wide policy will be introduced – but individual states can set their own policy.
The IPCR advice is a change in strategy from the Agency for Disease Control and Prevention, which last week advised against introducing mandatory Covid tests.
The ECDC said the testing was “unfair” given the high vaccination rates in Europe, and that the variant circulating in China was already present in the EU.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that there was no evidence of new strains in China despite the increase in cases. However, experts cautioned that this could be due to a lack of testing and data.
The WHO has also said that China was under-representing the true impact of Covid in the country – which it said was a “too narrow” definition of a Covid death.
Beijing has confirmed just 22 deaths since December, contradicting analysts’ figures.
UK science data company Airfinity estimates that there are more than 2 million Covid cases and 14,700 deaths in China every day.
The Chinese government suggested earlier this week that travel restrictions on Chinese arrivals were politically motivated – and warned it could retaliate.
