Italy has started mandatory COVID tests for people arriving on flights from virus-hit China amid a fresh global coronavirus alert after Beijing reopned its borders which has prompted former civil protection chief Guido Bertolaso to say fresh containment measures may be needed as almost one in two passengers arriving at Milan's Malpensa Airport are now testing positive for the virus.
The recent swabs of people arriving from COVID-emergency-hit China will be sequenced from now on, Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said.
From Saturday 24 December to today, the health ministry said, Schillaci has been closely following the outcome of the swabs carried out on passengers arriving at Milan's Malpensa Airport from China and he has now recommended the sequencing of all variants that may emerge from the swabs.
Since last Friday Schillaci has been operating on the case with the Higher Health Institute (ISS) steering committee for monitoring the progress of COVID-19 infections, the ministry said.
"Surveillance and prevention, through sequencing, are fundamental to detect any new variants that may cause concern and which, at the moment, do not appear to be circulating in Italy", the ministry added, saying that it will shortly report to cabinet on the matter.
In these hours , the ministry said, Schillaci has also been considering the possibility of ordering compulsory swabs for all passengers coming from China.
Schillaci has also been in contact for days with the competent authorities of other EU states to define shared strategies.
Schillaci "is following developments in the new COVID19 wave in China and will report to cabinet this afternoon," the ministry said.
Meanwhile in Rome testing resumed at Fiumicino airport for flights from China, said Alessio D'Amato, Lazio's Health Councillor.
"Awaiting national regulations, tests are resuming at Fiumicino international airport for flights from China," specified D'Amato.
"The tests will be carried out with the usual modalities, under the supervision of the Spallanzani (infectious diseases) Institute and with the the support of the regional USCAR monitoring bodies.
"We must not lower our guard, the latest news about Covid (out of China) urges us to keep our attention high".
The Spallanzani, Italy's premier infectious disease hospital, stressed that testing for those arriving from China must be boosted.
It called for "strengthening surveillance by means of antigenic tests for those from China, and molecular characterisation with sequence analysis in the positive cases.
"It would be better if the coordination of surveillance should take place at European level", the institute said.
"Such an intervention would serve to monitor the emergence and intercept early on the arrival of new variants, either as new evolutions of Omicron or as new variants other than Omicron, and to prepare possible selective quarantine measures'.
Authorities at Malpensa said that almost one in two travellers from China were testing positive for the coronavirus.
Almost one in two passengers, among those who arrived at Malpensa from China on 26 December aboard two flights, tested positive for Covid after the non-obligatory swab prepared by the Lombardy Region. "On the first flight," explained Lombardy Region councillor for Welfare Guido Bertolaso - out of 92 passengers, 35 (38%) were positive. On the second, out of 120 passengers 62 (52%) are positive'. Now 'we have activated the procedure for the sequencing,' he concluded, 'tomorrow morning we will have the first results".
The Spallanzani added that the "China problem today must be tackled with timeliness and international cohesion. The data, few and transparent, are creating fear in the international international community, including the scientific one.
"The fear is that, in a country (China) with a high percentage of non-vaccinated where ineffective vaccines have been used that give low protection to the population, such a strong exponential growth in infections could generate the selection of a new, much more immune-evasive and transmissible variant".
Lombardy's Welfare Councillor Guido Bertolaso said that new measures might be called for in the light of the data on travellers from China.
After the results of the first swabs of passengers arriving at Malpensa from China "I have spoken personally with Minister Schillaci, we have already spoken two or three times today and I know that he will report to the Council of Ministers. We shared the need to wait for the results of the sequencing before adopting any new measures", said the former national civil protection chief.
"These are numbers that should make us reflect and that call everyone to attention," he added, stressing that the decision to carry out the checks "was not a wrong or risky" initiative.
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