China to drop quarantine rules for overseas visitors
China will ease its strict Covid-19 measures for travellers entering the country within days despite soaring infection and death rates.
World
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China will drop Covid-19 quarantine requirements for passengers travelling from abroad from January 8.
The country’s National Health Commission has scrapped the rule that passengers must quarantine for five days at a hotel, followed by three days at home.
The scrapping of the measure is a major step toward fully reopening travel with the rest of the world.
China’s health commission said that steps would be taken to make it easier for some foreigners to enter the country, though it didn’t include tourists.
It did indicate that residents would be gradually allowed to travel abroad for tourism again.
People coming to China will still need a negative virus test 48 hours before departure and passengers will be required to wear protective masks on board, an online post from the health commission said.
It comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping urged officials on Monday to take steps to protect lives in his first public remarks on Covid-19 since Beijing dramatically loosened hardline containment measures this month.
Having mostly cut itself off from the rest of the world during the pandemic, China is now experiencing the planet’s biggest surge in infections after abruptly lifting restrictions that torpedoed the economy.
Studies have estimated that around one million people could die over the next few months. Many in the population are now grappling with shortages of medicine, while emergency medical facilities are strained by an influx of undervaccinated elderly patients.
“At present, Covid-19 prevention and control in China are facing a new situation and new tasks,” Xi said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
“We should launch the patriotic health campaign in a more targeted way... fortify a community line of defence for epidemic prevention and control, and effectively protect people’s lives, safety and health,” Xi said.
Hospitals and crematoriums across the country have been overflowing with Covid patients and victims, while China’s National Health Commission on Sunday announced it would stop publishing daily nationwide infection and death statistics.
The decision to scrap the daily virus count comes amid concerns that the country’s wave of infections is not being accurately reflected in official statistics.
Beijing has admitted the scale of the outbreak has become “impossible” to track following the end of mandatory mass testing, as people are now not obliged to declare test results to authorities.
The winter surge comes as millions of migrant workers are expected to travel to reunite with relatives during New Year’s Day and the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, which begins January 21.
In recent days, health officials in the wealthy coastal province Zhejiang estimated that one million residents were being infected per day, while the coastal city of Qingdao predicted roughly 500,000 new daily infections and the southern manufacturing city of Dongguan eyed 250,000 to 300,000.
A poll of over 150,000 residents of the southwestern province of Sichuan organised by disease control officials showed that 63 per cent had tested positive for Covid, and estimated that infections peaked Friday.
Crematorium workers interviewed by AFP have reported an unusually high influx of bodies, while hospitals have said they are tallying multiple fatalities per day, as emergency wards fill up.
The main funeral service centre in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou postponed all ceremonies until January 10 to focus on cremations due to the “large workload”, according to a notice published online Sunday.
China’s censors have been working overtime to spin the decision to scrap strict travel curbs, quarantines and snap lockdowns as a victory, even as cases soar.
Under China’s new definition of Covid deaths, only those who die of respiratory failure – and not pre-existing conditions exacerbated by the virus – are counted.
That means many of the dead across the country are no longer registered as Covid victims. Officials have also insisted that few are doing as a direct result of the virus, with recent official tallies being under that of most Australian states.
Authorities have urged those with mild symptoms to stay at home and take treatment into their own hands, leading to a run on everything from ibuprofen to rapid antigen tests.
To address nationwide shortages, more than a dozen Chinese pharmaceutical firms have been tapped by officials to help “secure supplies” of key drugs – a euphemism for requisitioning.
“My whole family is sick and I can’t buy medicine for the fever,” Chengdu resident Yanyan, who gave only her first name, told AFP.
On Thursday, a dozen pharmacies around the country reported fever medicine shortages.
“We haven’t had any for a week or two at all... I still have a few painkillers left, but very few,” a pharmacist in the northwestern region of Ningxia said.
The eastern city of Hangzhou on Thursday urged citizens to place medicine orders “rationally” based on their needs.
“Do not blindly hoard medicines... leave them to the people who really need them,” read a notice from the city’s market supervisory administration.
One expert said the bottleneck in supplies was a logistics rather than production issue.
“The industry and information authorities are heading up measures to secure production, but the logistics are still far from being smooth, namely the traditional channels of hospitals and pharmacies,” said Zhou Zhicheng, director at the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing.
As cases surge, hospital wards in major cities are filling up with elderly Covid patients.
In the eastern megacity of Shanghai, corridors of an emergency department were lined with stretchers filled with elderly people hooked up to oxygen tanks, some with suitcases next to their trolleys.
HOSPITALS FILL WITH COVID PATIENTS
“Deceased, deceased,” a staffer in full protective gear shouted as she handed a nurse a death certificate, their hospital in central China overflowing with Covid patients.
At No 5 People’s Hospital in Chongqing, the main entrance lobby had been converted into a makeshift Covid ward when AFP visited on Friday.
In the vast atrium, about a dozen beds occupied mainly by elderly patients on IV drips were cordoned off with red and white tape.
In a nearby room, about 40 mostly elderly and middle-aged patients sat on sofas and lay on beds receiving IV drips, some coughing.
A nurse said they all had Covid.
In an intensive care unit next door, three people lay on beds attached to respirators and heart monitoring equipment.
An elderly man was wheeled in on a stretcher, coughing and struggling to breathe.
At the emergency department, around 50 people queued for triage, including Covid patients, with one person at the front of the queue telling AFP they had waited for more than an hour.
The emergency room at another medium-sized hospital in downtown Chongqing was also overrun, with around 30 elderly people attached to IV drips, squeezed among beds and chairs.
Several were breathing through respirators and a few had pulse oximeters attached to their fingers.
A cleaner and a nurse at the first hospital told AFP there were several deaths per day since the government’s sudden decision at the beginning of the month to lift health restrictions and end mass testing.
It was not clear if all of the deaths were related to the virus. Similar scenes unfolded at a hospital in Shanghai on Friday, where patients lay in beds in the reception area and hallways, many of them older people hooked up to IV drips and oxygen tanks.
A worker in protective equipment wheeled a machine through the rooms that spewed out a mist of disinfectant, while anxious family members tended to the ill.
‘IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WORLD’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on China to share information on its Covid outbreak, saying its surging caseload had impacted the world, and he renewed an offer to share US vaccines.
“It is very important for all countries, including China, to focus on people getting vaccinated, making testing and treatment available and, importantly, sharing information with the world about what they’re experiencing,” Mr Blinken told a news conference.
“It has implications not just for China, but for the entire world. So we would like to see that happen,” Blinken said.
Mr Blinken said China has not asked for help. Beijing has promoted exports of homegrown vaccines judged by international health experts to be less efficient than US-made ones.
“We’re fully prepared to provide assistance to anyone who asks for it if they think it’s useful,” Mr Blinken said.
“Anytime the virus is spreading or is moving around, there is the possibility that a new variant develops, that variant spreads even further, and it comes and hits us or hits other countries ... and then, as we’ve seen, there are clear implications for the global economy,” he said.
— with AFP
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Originally published as China to drop quarantine rules for overseas visitors
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