BRUSSELS (AP) – European Union leaders agreed that borders should remain open and were reviewing more measures to combat the spread of coronavirus variants during a video summit Thursday as the bloc’s top disease control official said urgent action was needed to prevent and kill another wave of hospitalizations.
The 27 leaders expressed deep concern about the virus’s mutations and looked at further boundary restrictions, such as limits on all non-essential journeys, better tracking of mutations, and better coordination of lockdowns.
While they were concerned that another wave of deaths was imminent in the EU, they couldn’t immediately agree on whether or not to stop non-essential travel.
“It is very important not to travel, but you cannot legally enforce that right away,” said Prime Minister Mark Rutte after the conference call.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, stressed the importance of keeping borders open to keep goods moving smoothly and introduced measures “that protect us all”.
She said leaders were discussing a proposal to introduce new cross-border “dark red zones” where infection rates are particularly high and where all non-essential travel should be discouraged. Travelers from these areas may be required to undergo tests before departure and be placed in isolation at another location on arrival. Von der Leyen said the committee will make precise recommendations to member states in the coming days.
About 400,000 EU citizens have died of COVID-19-related causes since the pandemic began, and the head of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control Andrea Ammon said that “an increasing number of infections will lead to increased hospital admissions and mortality rates for all age groups, especially for the elderly. “
In a study published just before the summit, ECDC warned of the dangers of the new variants, such as those in Great Britain, Brazil and South Africa. Ammon said that “Member States are also being encouraged to speed up vaccination of at-risk groups and prepare the health care system for high demand.”
Some EU countries have already tightened restrictions by imposing stricter curfews and mask requirements on public transport and in shops. One of the measures that the ECDC recommends is a ban on non-essential travel and speed up vaccinations.
“Most said that free movement must survive, but that it is essential to ask not to travel,” said Rutte. “It is essential that we discourage travel in Europe as much as possible. Don’t travel, just don’t travel. ”
Following the advice of ECDC, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo had proposed a temporary ban on non-essential travel during the February school holidays.
As the health situation is at a critical juncture, the Committee has also urged Member States to speed up vaccination rates before the meeting, to ensure that at least 80% of people over 80 are vaccinated by March and that 70 % of the adult population in the whole block is protected by the end of the summer.
Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, said there is “global and clear support for this proposal”.
But since the EU doesn’t expect vaccines to be ready for mass distribution before April, leaders need to find efficient ways to contain the new variants in the meantime. The committee is of the opinion that better tracking of the virus mutations with genomic sequencing, in combination with an increasing use of rapid antigen tests, will be crucial.
The European Commission said several EU countries test less than 1% of the samples. It has proposed to increase genome sequencing “urgently” to at least 5% of the positive test results and ideally increase that figure to 10% to detect the variants. Member States unanimously agreed on Thursday on a common framework for the use of rapid antigen testing and mutual recognition of PCR test results in the block of 450 million inhabitants.
Talks also focused on the disruption to vaccine delivery after Pfizer announced a temporary cut last week that affected all EU countries. The EU has six vaccine contracts for more than 2 billion doses, but so far only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been approved for use.
The EU now expects Pfizer to limit the drop in deliveries to this week, while full distribution will resume next week, catching up with the resulting backlog in February.
The leaders also weighed in on a Greek proposal to issue vaccination certificates to facilitate travel. But with doubts as to whether the vaccinated people could still be contagious, and only a small part of the EU population has already been vaccinated, they agreed that it was too early to decide whether vaccination certificates should be considered travel documents.
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Associated Press writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
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Follow up AP reporting on the virus outbreak:
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus vaccine
https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak