Covid tests for arrivals from China defended by chairman of conservative health committee

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The government's decision to require travelers from China to produce a negative Covid test before flying to the UK has been defended by the Commons chairman Health and Social Care Committee.

Friday's announcement puts the UK in line with a growing number of countries - including the US, Italy, India and Japan - in imposing new controls as Beijing reopens its borders.

Some scientists have said such measures are unlikely to stop new variants reaching the UK, and the former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has expressed concern that this marks the first step in a return to national controls.

China has experienced an increase in Covid cases amid concerns about the potential for new variants

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However the head of the committee, Steve Brine, a Conservative MP and former health minister, rejected suggestions the government was trying to 'ban' the virus and said the measures were only necessary because the Chinese authorities would not share their data with other countries.

“We are not repeating Beijing's folly of an unreachable zero-Covid policy. We don't test it at the border,” he told BBC Radio 4 Today.

“What we are doing is introducing pre-departure testing which will just help to reduce the number of infectious people on the flight and therefore arrive in the UK.

"This would not happen if China were frank and open and shared their data as very many other countries do .

"This is not about reintroducing domestic restrictions in this country. We have a largely successfully vaccinated population. We have long since learned to live with Covid. There's no creep here."

Steve Brine accused China of not being upfront about its Covid data

(PA Media)