Italy wants EU to follow its lead on mandatory Covid-19 tests for China arrivals

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Italy’s measures risked “not being fully effective” if not extended across the EU, Said Italian PM Giorgia Meloni.

Italy’s measures risked “not being fully effective” if not extended across the EU, said Italian PM Giorgia Meloni.

ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI

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ROME - Italy expects and hopes that the European Union will follow its lead on imposing

mandatory Covid-19 tests for all passengers flying in from China,

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Thursday.

She said Italy’s measures risked “not being fully effective” if not extended across the EU, and indicated that preliminary tests showed that Covid-19-positive travellers from China have already known Omicron variants.

“We expect and hope that the EU will want to act in this manner,” Ms Meloni told an end-of-year press conference in Rome.

The Prime Minister, who criticised national lockdown measures while she was in opposition, said she did not believe that the reintroduction of restrictive measures would be the best way to face a possible new Covid-19 crisis.

As the Italian leader was speaking, top health officials from the EU were holding talks in Brussels to try to coordinate very different views on how to respond to China’s decision to lift its Covid-19 restrictions amid a wave of infections there. REUTERS

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