Denmark has in recent weeks been rapidly lifting Covid-19 restrictions, and will next month stop classing the virus as a "threat to society". We'd like to hear from readers if they feel Denmark is moving too fast, or if the timing is about right.
Denmark was on March 11th one of the first countries to impose a lockdown on the population, and last week it was one of the first to announce plans to drop all special Covid-19 restrictions (or at least all those that depend under Danish law on the virus’s threat category).
We’d love to hear how people living in Denmark feel about the country’s early moves to return to life as normal. Please fill in the short form below and tell us how you feel and what you think.
Travellers from China should not need a negative Covid-19 test when arriving in Denmark, the national infectious disease control agency State Serum Institute recommended on Saturday, in an assessment sent to the Ministry of Health.
In the assessment by the State Serum Institute (SSI), it was noted that there aren’t expected to be a large number of arrivals coming directly from China and that any tests would have a marginal affect on Danish epidemic control.
However SSI wrote that it was still important to keep an eye on new variants of Covid-19 and suggested that a sample of voluntary-based PCR tests could be introduced for travellers from China.
The assessment was requested by Denmark’s health minister Sophie Løhde, following a recommendation on Wednesday by European Union experts to tighten travel rules.
Infection rates in China are high after it abolished its ‘zero Covid’ policy in late 2022, although no precise numbers are available.
Several European countries, including France, Spain, Italy and the UK, had already introduced testing requirements, while Sweden on Thursday announced a similar step, as did Germany, with an added announcement on Saturday to discourage non-essential travel from Germany to China.
The United States, Canada, India, South Korea and Taiwan have also put testing rules in place.
Health minister Sophie Løhde also asked SSI to assess testing waste water from aircraft landed from China. SSI responded that there is limited experience in this.
SSI currently analyses samples from shared toilet tanks at four airports twice a week – Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg and Billund. The method would have to be changed in order to detect new Covid-19 variants, which would take up to four weeks to implement, according to the assessment.
Løhde has informed the parliamentary parties about the assessment and has asked the Epidemic Commission for an advisory assessment, she said in a press release. Once this is done, the recommendations will be discussed.
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