New rules reduced the required quarantine for arriving international passengers from 7 days in centralized quarantine plus 3 days at home to 5+3. The updated regulations also stipulate that inbound travelers should not be placed into isolation again after finishing the required quarantine at their first point of entry. Inbound travelers will have to take PCR tests four times in centralized quarantine and twice while under home quarantine.
Chinese authorities introduced 20 relaxed measures for Covid-19 control, including:
• Quarantine for close contacts of cases to be reduced to 8 days instead of 10
• Only one PCR test for inbound travelers needed within 48 hours of departure, down from two
• Circuit breaker for inbound flights to be canceled
• Incoming groups of business travelers and athletes will be transferred to a quarantine-free, closed-loop bubble
• Secondary close contacts will no longer be traced
• Categories of Covid-19 risk areas to be adjusted to high and low, from high, medium and low
• Mass testing only when the infection trajectory is unclear
• Booster vaccinations, especially among elderly, should be accelerated
• Inventories of Covid-19 drugs and medical materials will be strengthened; hospital and intensive care unit beds increased
• The cycle threshold (Ct) value – a measure that indicates how much virus a person is carrying – needed to get the all-clear has been lowered to 35. This reduces the risk that travelers who test negative when boarding will then test positive on arrival.
The new measures were introduced after a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Communist party of China, which once again reaffirmed the zero-Covid strategy, while stressing optimization of disease control measures based on the latest epidemic situation and patterns of viral mutations. China is still not allowing tourist visa applications.
The ending of flight suspensions due to a number of infected passengers on incoming flights, will increase the number of flights to and from China and thereby also trigger price drops. Searches for international air tickets on travel platform qunar.com already soared past its highest level in 12 months. Fliggy data showed that one hour after the policy was announced, search traffic for international air tickets on the platform increased threefold compared with the previous day. “The suspension of the circuit breaker policy is a welcome move,” Xie Xingquan, Regional Vice President of North Asia at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), told the Global Times. We hope that the Chinese government will have the confidence to remove quarantine and the need for Covid testing for arrivals, he added. Industry information provider VariFlight predicted that the flying capacity of inbound routes by the end of November is expected to increase by more than 25% month-on-month and be 300% higher than the low point of the year in May.
China has seen a major surge of cases in recent weeks, with 10,535 local infections reported on November 11, including 9,385 asymptomatic cases. The number, while small by international standards, marks a tenfold increase compared with the number of daily cases at the end of last month.
The number of new locally transmitted Covid-19 infections has continued to rise in recent days in Beijing to the highest number since the start of the epidemic, with high infection risks among communities, senior officials said. Liu Xiaofeng, Deputy Director of the Beijing CDC, suggested work units and companies reduce offline meetings and residents reduce gatherings. The Omicron variant BF.7 has become the main strain in Beijing. The flare-up started on October 27.
The rapid growth of the Covid-19 outbreak in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, has been initially contained after several days of great efforts, but the trend of the pandemic is still uncertain, according to the local health authority. “The city reported multiple sporadic cases in the entire city, with Haizhu district still being the main battlefield against the pandemic,” Zhang Yi, Deputy Director of the Guangzhou Health Commission said. Haizhu reported 2,423 of the city’s 2,583 infections on November 10, or a total of 14,940 infections since October 22. To curb the virus’ spillover, the health department has decided to give red health codes to those who have visited high-risk areas in Haizhu starting on November 11. They are required to report to local health departments, neighborhood committees or work units and stay at home for three days. Their health codes will become green again after three consecutive negative PCR tests. Guangzhou will no longer screen secondary close contacts, and those who are now being quarantined will be released.
Residents in 11 central urban districts in Chongqing are being urged not to leave their areas, and people from outside are being asked not to enter unless necessary, Li Pan, Deputy Director of the Chongqing Health Commission, said. Chongqing is facing a serious challenge in Covid-19 containment, as local infections are rising rapidly in all central urban districts and spreading to districts and counties outside the region. Chongqing covers 82,400 square kilometers and has a population of more than 30 million. From November 1 to 6 pm on November 12, 4,974 confirmed cases have been reported. Among them, more than two-thirds were in the city’s central urban districts. It was the first time in the past three years that Chongqing has experienced such a large number of infections, which have been rising very fast and spreading to almost every part of the city.
This overview is based on reports by the China Daily, Shanghai Daily, Global Times and South China Morning Post.
