Travellers arriving in Spain from China will be required to either prove they are fully vaccinated from Covid or have tested negative for the virus, it has been announced by the country’s health minister.
Infections are soaring in China and countries are implementing their own restrictions and requirements on those touching down who may be infected.
The UK government has said their policy on arrivals from China is ‘under review’.
However restrictions on travellers from China is unlikely to prevent new Covid variants reaching the the UK, the chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said.
Professor Andrew Pollard said it was very difficult to know whether any new variant that emerged in China would have a significant impact in Britain.
“Trying to ban a virus by adjusting what we do with travel has already been shown not to work very well. We have seen that with the bans on travel from various countries during the pandemic,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
“The important thing is that we have surveillance that when a virus is spreading within our population here in the UK or Europe we are able to pick that up and predict what might happen with the health systems and particularly the more vulnerable in the population.”
