Cyprus is likely to follow other EU countries in their approach to travellers from China amid its Covid surge, government advisor Petros Karayiannis said on Monday.
His comments to state broadcaster CyBC came ahead of the Covid committee’s meeting scheduled for the afternoon, called last week by the health minister as nations began imposing restrictions on travellers from China.
Most of the focus will be on monitoring the situation, such as genomic sequencing to detect new variants, Karayiannis explained.
“There is not much concern over Covid being brought in but rather there is concern over possibly importing a new variant of the virus,” he said.
But Karayiannis reiterated that the current dominant variant gripping China had been identified in Cyprus two and a half months ago.
He noted that there is no guarantee of a new variant being brought in and if that were to happen then to what degree it would be a variant of concern is also uncertain.
Karayiannis offered that the dominant strain in China is Omicron related but the main concern is that any new variant may be able to “further undermine the effectiveness of the vaccines”.
He said that currently all Covid patients in Cyprus are elderly, many of whom have underlying health conditions. He emphasised that many of them have not had their booster dose – “some of them not even the third shot”.
“I must emphasise that in these age groups the rate of those vaccinated with their fourth or fifth shot is about 26 per cent, therefore it is a very low rate,” he said.
Nations which have, or are considering, imposing restrictions on travellers from China cite a lack of information on variants. China, however, has said that future mutations are likely to be potentially more transmissible but less severe.
Britain on Friday announced that travellers from China will be required to prove a negative covid test pre-departure.
Last week, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides wrote in a letter to the health ministers of the 27 member states that the bloc should be “very vigilant” – adding that if a new variant appeared the EU must detect it very quickly and react early.
Elsewhere, the World Health Organisation has also called on China to share more real-time information on Covid.
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