Salvador Peiró
Epidemiologist, researcher in the Health Services and Pharmacoepidemiology Research Area of the Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research of the Valencian Community (FISABIO) and Director of Gaceta Sanitaria, the scientific journal of the Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration (SESPAS)
It seems to me to be one of those rhetorical measures that have been used so much during the pandemic. It is both ineffective and unnecessary.
1. Despite the news that China has been under-vaccinated, as far as we know they have a highly vaccinated population with a full vaccination schedule (slightly more than Spain and considerably more than some European countries) and half of the population with a booster (slightly more than Spain, although less than other EU countries that have been more successful than us with booster doses). The majority of the Chinese population who are going to travel will have a covid "passport".
2. As everyone should know by now, being vaccinated significantly reduces the risk of developing severe covid if you become infected, but not so much the risk of becoming infected. Especially not with the new omicron sub-lines. Covid passport controls do not (never have) made sense from a transmission control point of view.
3. If the aim is to control new variants (which at the moment do not seem more dangerous than the ones we have at home, which are also new variants such as BQ.1 or XBB), these measures should be applied to many countries, starting with the United States, and we would end up pointing to the countries that sequence the most (which will detect more variants).
4. Spain has a highly vaccinated (>90%) and highly infected population (75% with past infection in the seroprevalence survey of the Valencian Community in early October). The proportion of people with hybrid immunity is very high. This is what keeps us in the current situation of high transmission but few serious cases, and this will not change because there are or are no longer some introductions from China or any other country. The measures have to be assessed in the context of the immune situation we have at any given moment.
In short, it would be better if we were a little more concerned about increasing "quarters" for the elderly and vulnerable and that people with respiratory symptoms (whatever it is, covid, flu or whatever) wear masks and reduce their interaction with other people (especially the elderly and vulnerable).