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Travellers walk with their luggage at Beijing Capital International Airport. /Tingshu Wang/Reuters
Italy is to make COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China mandatory, the country's health minister said Wednesday.
"I have ordered mandatory COVID-19 antigenic swabs, and related virus sequencing, for all passengers coming from China and transiting through Italy," minister Orazio Schillaci said.
The measure was "essential to ensure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population," Schillaci added.
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The Italian region of Lombardy introduced screening from Tuesday December 27, with the measures being implemented nationwide from Wednesday December 28.
Lombardy, the first region to impose a COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020, is testing arrivals from China at Milan's Malpensa airport at least until January 30, the foreign ministry said.
Swabs collected at Malpensa in recent days are already being analyzed by the national health ministry, to help identify any new variants.
Italy's health minister Orazio Schillaci. /Tenagli Piero/CFP
The development comes just days after China announced it would stop requiring inbound travelers to go into quarantine from January 8. There are no official restrictions on Chinese people going abroad, but the new rule will make it much easier for them to return home.
The General Administration of Customs announced on Wednesday that international travelers to China will no longer need to do a nucleic acid test upon arrival from January 8, 2023, but they will be required to declare the result of the nucleic acid test within 48 hours before entry, officials added.
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Disinformation report hotline: 010-85061466