China eases quarantine rules, flight bans; insists not giving up on zero Covid-19

BEIJING – China on Friday further relaxed its strict Covid-19 measures, reducing the quarantine period for travellers from seven to five days, and axing a suspension on flights that bring in Covid-19 cases.

Now, travellers will only have to isolate at their point of entry into China, and not at their final destination. This may put an end to the additional home quarantines ordered by several cities for those who had recently returned from overseas, which had been unevenly enforced.

Contact tracers will also stop tracking secondary close contacts people who had a close encounter with a close contact of a Covid-19 case and they will no longer be quarantined.

The authorities insisted, however, that the easing of Covid-19 measures does not mean China is moving towards coexisting with the virus.

In announcing the list of 20 changes, the National Health Commission (NHC) framed it as adapting to the new situation of epidemic prevention and control and the new characteristics of the new coronavirus mutation.

It stressed that the adjustments were not about relaxing prevention and control, let alone letting go and lying flat, referring to the passive-resistance movement of making minimal effort.

Nonetheless, many have welcomed the changes. Searches on international flights doubled in the first hour after the announcement, said online booking platform Trip.com.

Today the NHC is offering Singles Day discounts too, read a popular comment on Weibo that garnered nearly one million likes, referring to the annual Nov 11 sale replete with massive discounts that has become the biggest shopping day of the year.

Fridays changes come as China records its highest number of Covid-19 infections in six months 10,729 new infections.

The last round of extensive policy changes was in late June, when the authorities halved the quarantine period from 14 days and said it would track only seven days of travel history.

The government then also discouraged local officials from preventing travellers from entering their regions. Local authorities such as those in Beijing, however, have prevented residents from returning as growing outbreaks pick up pace in the long wake of the National Day holidays in the first week of October.

Under the new guidelines announced Friday, the medium risk rating for areas with Covid-19 outbreaks will be scrapped. This means that areas will simply be deemed low or high risk, which will address a point of contention regarding people with a travel history to ambiguously termed risk areas being turned away from places they visit.

Now, high risk areas will be strictly confined to the immediate vicinity of a positive case, such as their residential building or place of work.

In recent months, there have been reports from Shanghai and Inner Mongolia of entire residential compounds being put under lockdown over a single positive case.

The worlds second-largest economy is the only country still pursuing what it calls a dynamic zero Covid-19 policy, which includes a combination of aggressive testing, mass lockdowns and centralised quarantines.

The NHC on Friday warned officials against disrupting daily life with arbitrarily ordered static management, a euphemism for a what is essentially a lockdown.

Local party committees and governments must responsibly and strictly adhere to the overall national Covid-19 prevention strategy, and are strictly forbidden from sealing off schools and suspending classes, stopping work, cutting off transportation without approval, arbitrarily going into static management, arbitrary lockdowns, not lifting lockdowns after extended periods and other acts of adding their own rules, it said.

Chinas top leaders had said as much on Thursday. In a Covid-19 strategic meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping, members called for more decisive measures to control the epidemic and resume normal life, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The leaders said the situation still remains severe given that cases keep surfacing, but noted that bureaucracy and arbitrary measures by local governments have become an issue that needs to be dealt with.

We must not only oppose irresponsible attitudes, but also oppose and overcome formalism and bureaucracy, and correct adding layers (of measures) and a one size fits all attitude, the committee said in a release from the meeting. Remote video URL More On This Topic Chinas return to normal to take at least a year, analysts say China won't relax Covid-19 policies but will keep improving them: Govt expert Related Stories What you need to know about S'pore's new Covid-19 vaccination strategy Asia stepping up fight against more infectious Covid-19 variants Hong Kong cements Covid-19 tests with centres just a 15-minute walk Covid-19 wave looms in Europe amid vaccine fatigue and false sense of security Long Covid remains a mystery, though theories are emerging askST: What is excess death and what is Covid-19's true toll on the world? Biden says pandemic is over; survivors and doctors disagree No plans to include Covid-19 vaccinations in childhood immunisation schedule: Ong Ye Kung Human development set back 5 years by Covid-19, other crises: UN report Covid-19's harmful effects on the brain reverberate years later: Study