New York
CNN
—
China will drop quarantine requirements for all passengers arriving from outside the country’s borders starting January 8, 2023, the country’s top health authority announced Monday.
The country will also remove all other Covid restrictions for travelers, including the isolation of positive patients and contact tracing.
Authorities say the new policy is part of a new way in which China intends to manage Covid. China has downgraded Covid’s management to a less stringent “Class B Disease”, the same category as less severe diseases, such as dengue fever. China will also call Covid an “infectious disease” instead of “pneumonia”. The National Health Commission said in a statement that the change was “more consistent with the current characteristics and severity of the disease”.
“The less lethal variant of Omicron has become the dominant strain of SARS-Cov-2 and only a very small number of cases develop into pneumonia,” the NHC said in a statement Monday.
The current quarantine policy for international visitors to China was first introduced in 2020 and has been revised over the past few years. The most recent policy, which will end on January 8, requires people arriving from outside mainland China and Macao to undergo Five days of hotel quarantine and three days of self-isolation at home.
Travelers are still required to take a Covid test before arriving in China, but passengers will not need to send their results to the Chinese embassy or consulate and ask for a code. Starting January 8, travelers can check and display the results before boarding.
NHC also announced that it will resume overseas travel for Chinese nationals in an orderly manner, depending on the international Covid situation and the capacity of various domestic services.
China has been gradually easing restrictions after closing its borders to nearly all travelers in March 2020, as the pandemic began to spread around the world.
After nearly three years of blockade, isolation and mass testing, China suddenly abandoned Its Covid-free policy this month follows nationwide protests over its heavy economic and social toll.
At the same time, China is grappling with an unprecedented wave of infections that has overwhelmed its hospitals and empty drug shelves. Since the world’s second-largest economy drastically eased restrictions due to Covid-19, there is no clear data on the extent of the virus’s spread at the national level. However, some cities and provinces say they have tens of thousands of new infections every day.
The sudden change in policy has caused panic buying of cold and fever medicines, leading to widespread shortages, both in pharmacies and on online shopping platforms. Long lines have become routine outside fever clinics and hospital wards overflowing with patients in the capital Beijing and elsewhere in the country.
China’s top leaders have recently signaled that they will shift focus back to growth next year and have bet on easing pandemic restrictions to revive the economy.
According to the NHC statement, China’s current focus is on preparing adequate medical resources. The NHC added that large and medium-sized cities need to quickly transform “Fangcang”, temporary Covid-19 concentrated isolation facilities, into designated hospitals with sufficient medical staff.
NHC also did not completely rule out the possibility of temporary and partial restrictions in the future.
“As we manage outbreaks, we should pay particular attention to a real-time global assessment of the magnitude of the outbreak – the pressure on the health system and the general situation of society. society – and take appropriate legal measures to flexibly limit people’s group movements and activities. ways to flatten the curve,” it said in the statement, adding that lockdowns could be reintroduced in nursing homes if the outbreak is severe.
– CNN’s Selina Wang, Nectar Gan and Laura He contributed to this report
