Beijing, June 13 (Prensa Latina) The Chinese cities of Beijing, Nanjing and Wuhan are testing a shorter period of centralized and domestic quarantine for travelers arriving in their territories on international flights, local press reported today.
According to the Global Times newspaper, the cities reduced isolation to seven days in both designated centers and shelters, but continue to conduct various PCR and antigen tests during both periods of observation.
Macau is also keen to follow suit, but has only reduced the respective quarantine times for visitors from mainland China to 14 and 10 days for now.
In recent weeks, China has taken steps to make the health mechanism more flexible and encourage international passenger traffic, though borders are still closed.
In some countries, their embassies have eliminated the need to present an official letter of invitation to foreigners who have a residence permit and need to travel here for work, business and family reasons.
However, these individuals must be vaccinated with one of the substances approved by the World Health Organization, ie Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Sinopharm and CoronaVac. These last two are domestic.
Some embassies have also reduced the number of PCR and antigen tests to be submitted before flights to China, and several of the country’s airlines are preparing to cover more international passenger routes.
In general, the Asian giant has recorded at least 18,787 deaths and three million 450,756 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in its mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan since the emergence of the disease and the coronavirus that causes it in December 2019.
Outbreaks have been strong since last March, and in the last few hours, the surge in patients in Beijing, Shanghai and Inner Mongolia has led to multiple days of massive screening of the population, lockdowns in many communities and the closure of public places .
jf/ymr