China Eases COVID Rules, Shortens Quarantine & Removed Flight...

Source:OT-Team(S,J),Beijing News

• Shorter centralized quarantine time for inbound traveler

• Abolition of international flight suspension rules

• Quarantine-free entry for some inbound personnel  
  

• 7-day home isolation for people from high risk areas, instead of centralized quarantine
  

• Classifying the epidemic related areas by “High and low risk” instead of “High, medium and low risk”, no more classification on sub-close contacts.
  

• Restriction on unnecessary “soft lockdown” and excessive epidemic prevention
  

• And so on.

Before: "7-day centralized quarantine + 3-day home health monitoring" for inbound personnel, and local communities in destination areas may ask the personnel to take extra quarantine.

After: "5-day centralized quarantine + 3-day home isolation", the health code will be mark red, relevant personnel are not allowed to go out.

After completing the quarantine at the entry cities, relevant personnel do not need to be repeatedly quarantined in destination areas.

Nucleic acid testings will be carried out on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th days during centralized quarantine. And on the 1st and 3rd days during home isolation.

Before: flights carrying over 5 COVID-19 positive cases will be suspended for at least 2 weeks.

After: The suspension rules for China inbound flights will be abolished. The negative nucleic acid test certificates of 2 times within 48 hours before boarding will be adjusted to 1 negative nucleic acid test certificate within 48 hours before boarding.

For important inbound business personnel, sports groups, etc., "Door-to-door" transfer and isolation-free control will be carried out. Relevant personnel can only stay in designated places for business, training, and competition.

Chinese personnel who enter the same places, are required to complete the COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, and take corresponding isolation management or health monitoring measures after, according to the risk level.

It is clarified that the judgment standard for inbound personnel who test positive, is nucleic acid testing Ct value < 35. Risk assessment will be carried out for those with nucleic acid testing Ct value of 35-40 when being released from centralized quarantine. If it is caused by previous infection, relevant personnel can continue with the 3-day home isolation, and get 2 testing during the time.

Before: 7-day centralized quarantine + testings

After: 7-day home isolation.

Nucleic acid testings will be carried out on the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th days.

Before: High, medium and low risk areas

After: High and low risk areas, classified more precisely

In principle, areas where infected persons live and where they have been to frequent will be judged as high-risk areas, other areas in the city (county, district,etc) where the high-risk areas are located, are designated as low-risk areas. If no new infections are detected in high-risk areas for 5 consecutive days, they will be set as low-risk areas and the epidemic control will be lifted  in a timely manner.

Before: sub-close contacts (close contacts to those who have close contact with COVID infections) are also quarantined

After: No more “classification” on sub-close contacts

Also, the officials have announced policies for further improvement on the domestic epidemic control, such as:

For areas where no epidemic has occurred, nucleic acid testings should only be carried out for people under high risk, and large scale testings for other people should be banned.

It is strictly forbidden to arbitrarily suspend classes, suspend work and production, and suspend traffic without approval, or arbitrarily implement any lockdown/static management control and keep the control for long time.