German expert probes COVID testing for Chinese travelers

A German epidemiologist, Klaus Stöhr, has questioned the value of testing travellers from China for COVID-19 amid a growing debate in Europe.

Several countries in Europe, including France and Spain, have introduced COVID-19 measures, including the testing of travellers coming from China to monitor the coronavirus and any emerging mutations.

However, Stöhr said testing travellers from China is not an effective way to curb new virus variants, amid concerns that these may be spreading undetected.

“Monitoring is not such a bad idea, it is certainly interesting from a scientific point of view, but in purely practical terms we will then have to see how this variant behaves in the population.’’

Stöhr, a former head of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) influenza programme told German public radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Wednesday.

He said the main thing was determining which characteristics have changed along with genetic ones.

Stöhr also said whether other age groups were also affected and how far people were protected by their level of immunity.

“All these take a certain amount of time, and the variant has already slipped through.

“Even testing cannot prevent this,’’ said Stöhr.

He added that testing would not detect every person infected with COVID-19.

His comments came as the virus spreads rapidly through China, where the authorities abruptly dropped the zero-COVID policy that involved lockdowns, mass tests and forced quarantine for almost three years.

That move triggered an unprecedented wave of cases and EU crisis specialists were due to consider whether to introduce a bloc-wide policy in response.

dpa/NAN