Finland’s corona ministers are meeting tonight to outline how Finland will implement the China travel recommendations agreed by the EU countries yesterday. Sweden will introduce the measures on Saturday.
Last night, the EU countries decided on common EU-wide restrictions for travelers from China.
Finland’s corona ministers are meeting tonight to outline how Finland will implement the EU countries’ recommendation.
The number of coronavirus infections has increased rapidly in China since the country relaxed its strict corona restrictions at the end of last year.
Now that the Chinese are allowed to travel more freely again, concern has arisen in different parts of the world about whether new, nastier forms of the virus are spreading with tourists.
Sweden already had time to announce today that it will start demanding a corona test from travelers coming from China. The requirement will take effect on Saturday, January 7 and will be valid for at least three weeks. However, the requirement does not apply to Swedish citizens.
Australia, Canada, Britain and France, among others, have already decided to tighten entry requirements for travelers from China.
\”No country has been able to prevent virus mutations\”
*–* In the EU region, requiring a negative test result is of little importance if the destination country does not have many infections and there are many travelers from China coming from an area with many infections.
However, according to Jalava, the measures will not be able to prevent the spread of new virus variants in the EU area.
*–* Over the course of three years, quite a lot of experience has been gained from this in connection with different virus variants and different disease waves. No country anywhere has been able to prevent their spread in their territory with such measures or any other heavier measures, says Jalava.
According to Jalava, there are quite a lot of corona infections in Finland at the moment, although their number is gently decreasing. He does not believe that passengers from China would bring a very large additional disease burden with the current number of passengers.
According to current information, the same virus variants are circulating in China that have already circulated in Europe and elsewhere. According to the data published by the WHO, no other new virus variants have been found in China.
\”The aim of the measures is to get more information\”
*–* We have very little information about the situation in China and it is quite difficult to make a risk assessment when we do not know how many disease cases there are in China and what viruses are currently circulating there. The first goal of the measures is to get more information, Puumalainen said today in an interview with Radio Suomen dajs.
According to Puumalainen, some of the recommended measures are currently already in use.
*–* Masks are mandatory on flights to China as determined by the airline, and you should not travel if you have symptoms. THL has already enhanced wastewater monitoring and analysis of virus subtypes.
Puumalainen believes that there are enough resources to implement additional measures, as there are only a few flights from China to Finland per week.