KEY POINTS
- Australia has introduced new COVID-19 testing rules on travellers from China
- Experts say it will have a minimal impact on outbreaks in Australia
- So why is Australia forcing travellers to get tested and could this be rolled out to other countries?
Australia's new COVID-19 rules on travellers from China has raised questions about how it should handle overseas outbreaks and whether it's likely to target other nations grappling with the rise of an infectious new variant.
Experts have criticised the federal government's announcement that travellers from China, Hong Kong and Macau will , despite Australia's .
Infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon of Australian National University said allowing more infectious people in from China would have a minimal impact on COVID waves in Australia, even if infections were five to 10 times higher among Chinese travellers than those coming from other countries.
"Because there's so many more people coming back from everywhere else in the world, they will be a minority of cases," Professor Collignon said.
He said Australia's current COVID wave was in decline, although baseline cases may stay up a bit higher if there was an influx of infectious travellers.
So why is Australia forcing travellers to get tested, and could this be rolled out to other countries?
Passengers wearing face shields walk inside the Beijing Capital International Airport in China on 1 January 2023. Source: AAP / Mark R. Cristino/EPA
Testing on travellers from China could be 'political'
Health Minister Mark Butler said Australia is acting with "an abundance of caution" in introducing the pre-flight testing, and noted that multiple countries around the world including the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Italy, Spain and France had also imposed the same restriction.
He also pointed to remarks from World Health Organisation director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who : "In the absence of comprehensive information from #China, it is understandable that countries around the world are acting in ways that they believe may protect their populations."
In particular, the WHO has pointed to the lack of information available from China about the genomic sequencing of cases, which is important in the detection of new variants and is shared in real-time by other countries including Australia.
On Tuesday, scientists from the China CDC presented genomic data from more than 2000 people to the WHO that showed variants BA.5.2 and BF.7, which have been circulating in other countries, accounted for 97.5 per cent of all local infections. While no new variant has so far been reported in China, the WHO has reiterated the need for rapid and regular depositing of data into publicly accessible databases.
China has amid widespread protests after years of enforced lockdowns. But it stopped publishing data on daily cases on 24 December and has criteria for counting COVID deaths that experts believe is too narrow.
There is still little data to help authorities understand the true extent of China's outbreak, and images of busy hospitals and crematoriums have sparked concerns.
People rest while tending to their elderly relatives along a corridor of a hospital emergency ward in Beijing on January 3, 2023. Source: AAP / Andy Wong/AP
China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has , saying they lacked scientific bases.
"We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity," she said.
It's unclear what these reciprocal measures would be, as people travelling from Australia to China are already required to get a negative COVID test within 48 hours of departure.
Could Australia require travellers from other countries to be tested?
Parts of the United States, Europe and Japan are in winter and this increases the risk of higher COVID case numbers. A new Omicron variant has also emerged from the US.
In less than a month, the XBB.1.5 subvariant has gone from making up under 10 per cent of cases in the US, to more than 40 per cent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's variant tracker. While it appears to be , at this stage it does not seem to cause more severe disease.
Associate Professor Paul Griffin of the University of Queensland said XBB.1.5 was probably the most concerning subvariant currently circulating. It is already in Australia and has also spread in the UK.
"On that context alone, I do wonder why we are choosing to test ... people travelling from China, rather than other countries where there are more concerning variants," the infectious diseases physician and microbiologist said.
Professor Griffin said he wouldn't have expected Australia to introduce testing requirements on travellers from any country given the phase of the pandemic response the world was in.
"But we have done that with China, so if we're doing to do that for China, perhaps you could make a strong argument for doing it from the USA at the moment - but I just don't think that would happen."
He said the logistics and feasibility of testing travellers from particular locations given people's often complex itineraries, which could see people arrive by many routes, would not achieve the intended purpose.
"I hope we don't introduce testing requirements for other countries," he said.
"I'd really like to see us focus on strengthening surveillance within our country, not turning it on and off - but just having a really good ongoing surveillance here because we know that the virus isn't going to go away."
Professor Collignon also did not think more restrictions would be necessary unless a serious new variant emerged.
"To me, the only justification for some restrictions would be a new variant that evades vaccines, and causes more deaths and serious disease," he said.
"We have not had a variant like that in the last couple of years and I'm not expecting one."
"Our focus now with so many people infected ought to be - how do we stop serious disease and death?"
Professor Collignon said vaccines were the most important measure to prevent people from dying, alongside other measures including encouraging outdoor activities and the wearing of masks.
What else can be done to keep Australians safe?
Professor Griffin said strengthening COVID-19 surveillance in Australia using methods like wastewater testing, which states Queensland and Tasmania have abandoned, would be a better strategy than requiring travellers to get COVID tests.
Ensuring people were still getting PCR tests so sequencing information on new variants could be gathered would also benefit, he said. This could include testing returned travellers to help authorities understand what infections were coming into the country.
"We saw with the attempts to try and limit the spread of Omicron that it's just not possible," he said. "If a new variant did arise in China, it would spread to other neighbouring countries very quickly and so it just wouldn't be possible to contain by any testing or containment measures."
Health Minister Mark Butler has said the government intends to test wastewater from planes, and it is also reviewing and strengthening community wastewater testing arrangements around Australia.
Travellers at Beijing airport on December 29, 2022. Source: AAP / Andy Wong/AP
Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson says a genuine strategy rather than a "series of political responses" is needed to keep Australians safe.
"We really would love to see a comprehensive strategy about how to deal with the COVID situation in the Northern Hemisphere, at a time when there's a huge amount of travel going on and almost no mitigations rather than what would look to people like a series of political responses," he told AAP.
"We want to see a comprehensive strategy that's informed by public health practice, to just say, 'what needs to be done to protect Australians at this vulnerable time?'"
Professor Robson said he understood the fatigue people were feeling about COVID measures but more people would die unless fundamental principles were adopted.
"We've just literally come out of the most lethal year of the pandemic by a longshot ... We want to see a strategy that's evidence-based, nimble ... and based on good public health principles," he said.
"We haven't really heard anything from the government except a plan that really seems cobbled together ... it's time for this cobbling to stop and coherence to start."
With AAP.
