China will scrap quarantine for travellers from 8 January, marking the last major shift from the country’s zero-Covid policy, officials have said.
After almost three years of closed borders, this will reopen the country to those with work and study visas, or seeking to visit family.
Asian markets rose on Tuesday after hopes for the revival of the world’s second-largest economy.
In the wake of the news, Chinese citizens have flocked to travel sites in anticipation. Data from travel platform Ctrip showed that within half an hour of the news, searches for popular cross-border destinations had increased 10-fold.
However, the scrapping of China’s zero-Covid policy this month has resulted in the virus spreading ferociously among the country’s 1.4 billion people.
Doctors say hospitals are overwhelmed with five to six-times more patients than usual, most of them elderly. International health experts estimate millions of daily infections and predict at least one million Covid deaths in China next year.
Official statistics showed only one Covid death in the past seven days, fuelling doubts about the legitimacy of government’s data.
Many shops in have been forced to close in recent days with staff unable to come to work, while some factories have already sent many of their workers on leave for the late January lunar new year holidays.
China is the last major economy in the world to move to “living with Covid” after three years of lockdowns, closed borders and mandatory quarantine for Covid cases and contacts.
Anger at the policy exploded into rare public protests against President Xi Jinping in November, which were followed by authorities dropping Covid rules just a few weeks later.
Closed borders remain the last major restriction.
Since March 2020, anyone entering China had to undergo mandatory quarantine at a state facility for up to three weeks at a time. That was recently reduced to five days.
But on Monday the National Health Commission announced that Covid would be formally downgraded to a Class B infectious disease on 8 January.
That meant quarantine would be axed, although incoming travellers will still need to take a PCR test. A cap on the daily number of flights allowed into China will also be scrapped.
