China will cancel mandatory coronavirus quarantine for visitors

From January 8, China will stop sending travelers arriving in the country to mandatory quarantine.

This was reported by Reuters with reference to the statement of the National Health Commission of China.

China will also reduce the level of restrictions due to COVID-19 from the highest category A to the less strict category B. The National Health Commission believes that the disease has become less pathogenic and will gradually turn into a common respiratory infection.

Travelers entering China are now required to spend five days of mandatory quarantine at a government-controlled facility and another three days of isolation at home. This norm, as well as restrictions on the number of passengers on international flights, will be canceled on January 8.

However, people entering China will still have to take a PCR test 48 hours before departure.

• At the end of November, protests took place in Shanghai due to strict quarantine restrictions that have been in effect since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Similar protests began in other Chinese cities. The cause was a fire in a high-rise building in the city of Urumqi, where 10 people died. After that, the idea began to spread among people that the dead could not escape in time because the building was closed due to quarantine. These protests also raised slogans against the Chinese government and Xi Jinping.
• The Chinese authorities have decided to seriously relax quarantine coronavirus restrictions. The country will no longer require negative PCR tests, rapid tests, or "health codes" to enter most public places. Exceptions will be homes for the elderly, social security and medical institutions, schools, and kindergartens. Also, in order to optimize testing in the administrative regions of China, mass testing for coronavirus will not be carried out without an urgent need.
• Bloomberg, citing its own sources, wrote that since the beginning of December, almost 248 million people, or 18% of the countryʼs population, have been infected with the coronavirus in China. Chinese authorities have officially confirmed only three thousand new cases since the beginning of December.