There are still very few Chinese travelers in Finland and there are no signs of a rush in the near future either.
The government’s corona ministerial working group decided at the end of the week that Finland is preparing to require air passengers arriving from China to have a negative corona test result that is no more than two days old. The date of entry into force of the requirement is still open.
The risk of a new disease wave will be lower this time. At least if you estimate the risk by the number of Chinese tourists.
It may be that there will be few Chinese groups in street photos in the future. According to the forecast, for example, the number of Chinese passengers this year will also be far below the level of the record year 2019.
– Of course, the direct flight and short flight time made Finland an attractive travel destination. So it remains to be seen how attractive Finland will be as a travel or exchange destination for the Chinese in the future, says Tallqvist.
Corona test decisions to be made at the EU level
Finnair is not alarmed by the possible new corona test requirements.
– It probably can curb travel to some extent, but it is nothing new in itself and there are still those restrictions in many countries. We await official instructions. The staff at the departure examination are very used to checking various corona certificates, says Tallqvist.
As a representative of hotels and restaurants, Lappi hopes that the new corona restriction decisions would be made at the level of the entire EU.
– This should be an EU-level decision. If all the other EU countries make the same decision, then the competition will not be distorted between the countries due to the restrictions. Sweden has probably already decided that the Chinese will be required to undergo a corona test before departure. On the other hand, is this useful or not, when a new dangerous variant has not been detected in the Chinese, the health authorities have not required this test, and there is a lot of corona in circulation in Finland, says Lappi.
Restrictions are not of much medical benefit
– Testing in China can change a passenger’s plans, but if you test positive on the plane and you don’t know it, you might be carrying the virus.
Testing provides information about viruses and their variants, and the same information is also obtained from random testing in Finland. From the point of view of the spread of viruses, such testing has no significance.
So far, there is no information about new virus variants that have been found in China. The Omikron-XBB1.5 variant has already spread to Europe
– In China, the population’s immune response is so low. There have not been many vaccinated and not many sick, so probably these current mutations will take over the field there and there won’t necessarily be new mutations, but the country is large and there are many people, so it remains to be seen.
Mäkijärvi does not trust the Chinese authorities’ corona information and the numbers of illness may be something else than what has been reported now. The real figures for Finland are not known either, because testing has decreased considerably.
The usual number of HUS staff are sick during the worst infection season. Regarding hospital patients, it is known, for example, that the number of corona-positive patients at HUS has been quite stable in recent weeks and has actually declined a bit in recent days.
According to Markku Mäkijärvi, Finns should consider wearing a mask.
– We also have other viruses. Influenza epidemics have come earlier and are rs and other viruses. Now, citizens should protect themselves, wear a mask and then stay home if there are even a few symptoms of infection in the respiratory tract.