Spain has become the second European country to announce new COVID restrictions for travelers from China after a spike in cases.
To enter Spain, travelers will need a negative test result or complete vaccination.
It comes after Italy earlier this week ordered COVID antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travelers arriving from China.
Corona virus infections across China spiked in December after Beijing ended its zero-COVID policies, including regular PCR testing of its population.
China said this week it would end mandatory quarantine on arrival, prompting many Chinese people to plan to travel abroad.
And there are fears that the end of nearly three years of strict measures in the country of 1.4 billion people could lead to a large-scale spread of the disease around the world.
But the European Union’s health agency said on Thursday it believed the introduction of mandatory COVID screening of travelers from China was “unfair”.
Outside the EU, countries that have introduced new restrictions such as mandatory testing include the US, Japan, India, Taiwan and South Korea.
However, such measures are not necessary for the EU as a whole, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in a statement.
In the UK, ministers have said the government is reviewing the situation.
Health Minister Will Quince said the “significant risk” was the potential for new strains to emerge.
But Professor Andrew Pollard said the imposition of travel restrictions was unlikely to be effective in preventing the species from arriving in the country.
“Trying to restrict the virus by adjusting what we do with travel already doesn’t work very well,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
On Friday, Malaysia announced that it will check the body temperature of all travelers arriving from China, and those who have a fever or other symptoms will be tested for COVID.
It will also sample aircraft sewage from China for the coronavirus and test it to detect any new arrivals.
Countries imposing restrictions cite China’s lack of knowledge about the variety and worry about a wave of infections.
China has dismissed criticism of its COVID data and said it expects future variations to likely be more transmissible but less severe.
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