The worrying news filtering from China on the Covid epidemic after the easing of restrictions – at least 5 thousand deaths and over a million infections a day according to estimates by the British research company Airfinity – also trigger the alarm in Italy. Covid screening for those arriving from the Republic of China has returned to Malpensa since 26 December: those who land at the Milanese airport from a flight from the Asian country are subjected to a swab at the airport to search for Sars-Cov-2. And while Japan will impose Covid tests on visitors from mainland China from Friday 30 December, the EU is for now staying on the sidelines and does not plan to return to containment measures for travellers.
Lombardy, sequencing swab requested at Malpensa
Lombardy Region requires a molecular swab from those arriving by flight to Malpensa from China, a swab which is not mandatory in any case. This is a preventive measure that also serves to ascertain the type of Covid variant of those arriving from the Asian country. Yesterday, December 26, 90 swabs were performed, today (December 27) 120 and tomorrow we will have the first sequencing results.
Bassetti: the EU should raise a barrier
But an immediate reaction to avoid a new wave of infections is required by some virologists, such as Matteo Bassetti: “After three years we are in a situation in which I never imagined finding myself – says the director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino hospital in Genoa. If we want to avoid recovering a mutated Sars-CoV-2 we must intervene immediately: checks are needed on all flights from China, travel restrictions, a molecular swab on passengers in the 24 hours prior to departure or quarantine on arrival with a molecular test to get out of it. otherwise those arriving must not circulate. It would be a measure that should be taken, not by Italy alone, but by all of Europe. And not for a month, but for 6». “I have never been an alarmist – adds Bassetti – but now I say that we must raise a barrier to protect ourselves from what is happening in China, where an unprecedented new wave of Covid is underway and on which there is censorship”.
Ciccozzi: swab for those arriving from China
Along the same lines Massimo Ciccozzi, professor of epidemiology and medical statistics at the Campus Biomedico University of Rome: «It is unscientific and incomprehensible that China does not provide data on Covid, but the silence of the World Health Organization (WHO) is also serious on this choice. They don’t want to know what’s really going on.” In the face of this behavior “it would be necessary to introduce molecular tampons into Italy for those arriving from China, especially in view of the Chinese New Year”.
The Beijing authorities, the epidemiologist points out, “made one mistake after another: first a tight lockdown with a virus in which zero contagion does not exist. Then, after the protests, they opened and eliminated checks indiscriminately like no other country has done. Added to this is the fact that they have a viral vector vaccine with a coverage of 60% of serious disease compared to a coverage that exceeds 90% with mRna vaccines. And above all, they only gave this vaccine to young people and adults of working age, while the vaccination rate among the 50-year-olds is very low. The only answer, he concludes, “is to introduce the obligation to swab on arrival in Italy. However, a test is not enough, which we know gives 30% false negatives. We need a molecular swab with isolation until the result ».