BEIJING
People in China reacted with joy and rushed to plan trips overseas Tuesday after Beijing said it would scrap mandatory Covid quarantine for overseas arrivals that will end almost three years of self-imposed isolation.
In a snap move late Monday, China said from January 8 inbound travellers would no longer be required to quarantine on arrival in a further unwinding of hardline coronavirus controls that had that torpedoed its economy and sparked nationwide protests.
Cases have surged nationwide as key pillars of the containment policy have fallen away, with authorities acknowledging the outbreak is “impossible” to track and doing away with much-maligned official case tallies.
Beijing also narrowed the criteria by which Covid fatalities are counted last week, a move experts said would suppress the number of deaths attributable to the virus.
Still, many Chinese reacted with joy to the end of restrictions that have kept the country largely closed off to the outside world since March 2020. “I felt like the epidemic is finally over,” said Beijing office worker Fan Chengcheng, 27.
“The travel plans I made three years ago may now become a reality.”
Shanghai resident Ji Weihe said the move would make China “benefit the economy, peoples’ lives and their desires to go out and travel”.
Another Shanghai local, surnamed Du, said a swifter reopening may help the country reach herd immunity more quickly, adding that there was “no way to avoid” the virus now circulating in the eastern megacity.
Online searches for flights abroad surged on the news, with travel platform Tongcheng seeing an 850% jump in searches and a ten-fold jump in enquiries about visas, according to state media reports.
