For the first time since placing limits on overseas travel in March 2020, China has reopened its borders to travellers from outside.
As the nation fights a rise in cases, there will be no longer be a requirement for incoming travellers to quarantine, marking a dramatic shift in the Covid policy.
They will still need documentation of a PCR test that was negative and performed within 48 hours of the trip.
Many people who are ready to reunite with relatives have welcomed the move.
In the upcoming weeks, 400,000 individuals from Hong Kong are anticipated to fly into locations like Beijing and Xiamen, where there would be lengthy lines for flights.
Several college students returning home arrived on Sunday in double-decker buses full of passengers at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge to board buses to the Guangdong province.
One guy told the BBC that he hadn’t seen his extended family in three years and that, after having just purchased a ticket to return to the island, he was unable to contain his joy.
Despite the fact that one of her parents had colon cancer, a woman told the news agency Reuters that she had not seen her parents in years and that she was “so, so joyful.”
The reopening of the nation coincides with the beginning of “Chunyun,” the first travel season during the Lunar New Year. It was the greatest yearly global movement of individuals going home to see relatives prior to the epidemic.
This Lunar New Year, two billion travels are anticipated, which is twice as many as in 2017.
Li Hua, who travelled to China to attend the festival with her family after moving there from the UK, said it had been “I’ve been away for far too long; I’m very glad to be back and breathe Chinese air. So joyful, so joyful “.
After visiting Hong Kong, Mark Clayton travelled back to his hometown of Zhuhai in Guandong with his wife and infant. His return flight had been “almost as smooth as it used to be pre-Covid,” he told the BBC.
We merely scanned a code, filled out a brief customs statement, and proceeded straight through, he continued, “We didn’t even show them the PCR.”
Chinese youth self-infect as worries for the elderly rise
WHO cautions that China is underreporting Covid fatalities.
How many cases of Covid exist in China?
However, other people worry that expanding the borders may increase the spread of Covid-19.
According to some local bus drivers who spoke to the BBC, they want their employers to give them extra protection because they are concerned they could contract the virus from arriving travellers.
China has one of the strongest Covid health rules over the previous three years, which resulted in repeated lockdowns, regular testing procedures, and a major negative impact on the country’s economy.
Following nationwide demonstrations against the programme that were sparked by a high-rise building fire in Xinjiang that left 10 people dead, the government suddenly changed its mind. Although officials disputed this, many Chinese suspected that the long-standing Covid restrictions were a factor in the fatalities.
Hospitals and crematoriums have reportedly been overcrowded since China abandoned the main tenets of its Covid zero policy, but the nation has ceased disclosing its case statistics and only announced two fatalities on Saturday.
The Chinese government deleted more than 1,000 social media accounts on the same day for criticising how it handled the outbreak.
Many nations, including the UK, have implemented criteria for a negative COVID-19 test on persons travelling from China, angering the Chinese government. This is due to the predicted spike in cases and transit out of China.
