China lifts the mandatory quarantine for foreign travelers on Sunday, ending three years of self-imposed isolation and at a time when it is facing an unprecedented wave of covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
After about three years with some of the most severe restrictions in the world, which damaged its economy and ended up triggering nationwide protests, the Chinese authorities decided, at the end of December, to abruptly abolish most of the pandemic control measures. caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The last step in the lifting of restrictions takes place on Sunday with the end of mandatory quarantines in hotels for all people arriving in the country since March 2020.
Initially three weeks, the duration of this quarantine had already been reduced to one week last summer, then to five days in November.
The announcement of the end of the so-called zero covid policy and the mandatory quarantine led the Chinese to make plans to travel abroad, with an exponential increase in traffic on booking sites, advanced the France-Presse agency.
Following this Chinese decision to open its borders, more than a dozen countries, including Portugal, began to require travelers from that country to test negative for covid-19 to enter their territories.
China is facing an unprecedented wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections, a situation that is expected to worsen with the Chinese New Year holidays at the end of January, when millions of people are expected to move from megacities to the countryside. to visit their relatives, many of whom are elderly and vulnerable.
The Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, said that the random testing operation for Covid-19 on travelers from China, which began today, “went clearly well”, with no reason for alarm.
According to Manuel Pizarro, in this operation, “what is at stake is not to create alarmism”, but to collect information that “allows us to safely guide the steps that come next”.
“Unfortunately, we cannot have complete confidence in the information given to us by the Chinese authorities, who manifestly devalue part of that information”, lamented the official.