The requirement to present a negative covid test certificate applies to all direct travel from China, for travelers aged 12 and over. Airlines must ensure that each person has a negative test certificate and deny boarding if they do not. Upon arrival on Belgian territory, the airport operator will check again whether the traveler is in possession of this certificate. The test must not have been carried out more than 48 hours before departure.
“In the absence of the required control certificate or of false, misleading or incomplete information in this certificate, non-Belgian travelers who do not have a main residence in our country will be refused entry into Belgian territory”, underlines Mrs de Moor.
Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke has confirmed that a royal decree will be published this weekend (normally Saturday), the legal basis necessary to demand this negative covid test. The flight scheduled for this Saturday will therefore not yet be affected, but on the other hand it should already be subject to the pilot project for the analysis of the aircraft’s wastewater.
The analysis of wastewater from planes arriving from China should make it possible to detect the possible presence of coronavirus on board the plane, and to identify its variants. “The covid crisis in China does not currently pose any particular epidemiological risk to us, as long as the variants that we already know here are concerned”, insists Thursday the office of Minister Vandenbroucke. The purpose of sequencing is precisely to remain vigilant as to the possible appearance of new variants.
Health authorities meet
Note that a meeting of the health authorities (Risk Management Group, RMG) is taking place this Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. to discuss the situation and analyze all the measures to be taken.
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