Three years after China reported that cases of "atypical pneumonia" had been detected in the city of Wuhan, the Asian giant has announced that it is finally willing to reopen to the world.
The National Health Commission reported Monday night that the country will cancel the centralized quarantine for international travelers on January 8, thus ending 33 months in which its borders have been virtually sealed.
That same day, the covid will officially be considered a less serious disease, against which it will not be necessary to impose protocols as strict as those that have been applied since 2020. The decision represents a further step in the total dismantling of the policy of covid zero, which has dominated the lives of the 1.
The National Health Commission has announced that, as of January 8, 2023, to enter China it will only be required to show a negative certificate of a PCR carried out in the 48 hours before boarding, also eliminating the obligation to receive a code of approval by the Chinese authorities in the country of origin.
Until that day, the quarantine will continue to be five days in a hotel room, followed by three days of observation at home.
The change comes after three weeks in which Beijing has been notifying the elimination of practically all containment measures that were part of its strict zero covid policy.
This new regulation, however, does not mean an imminent full reopening of the country.
The Government has not yet confirmed when it will issue tourist visas again and, although the health authorities assured in their note on Monday that everything possible will be done to facilitate the procedures for obtaining business, work, study or family reunification visas for foreigners, all the details about it are unknown.
China closed its borders on March 28, 2020, at which time it also canceled the residence permits of all foreigners who were then outside its territory.
In all this time, flying to the country has been an arduous task, both due to the difficulty of obtaining proper permits, as well as the prohibitive price of tickets and quarantines;
the isolations in a hotel room,
In the case of Chinese citizens, the authorities reported that travel abroad will be restored "in an organized manner."
In February, the National Immigration Administration stated that as long as the pandemic situation abroad continued to be "a great security risk", the passports of its nationals would not be renewed for non-essential travel, so the few who have left of the country have done so for study or business reasons.
15 minutes after the news broke, searches for foreign tickets on the Chinese travel platform Qunar skyrocketed by 850%, according to the economic
outlet Cailianshe
.
Health officials assure that the change in policy is due to the fact that 90% of omicron cases "are mild or asymptomatic" and that the covid will gradually evolve into a common respiratory infection, a rudder in the narrative regarding the speech from two months ago.
The National Health Commission pointed out that, despite the change, prevention and control measures will be strengthened in key institutions, such as nursing homes, and that, in the event that an outbreak becomes especially virulent, a "circuit closed".
It was also emphasized that vaccination among the elderly and the inoculation of a second booster dose among the most vulnerable groups will be encouraged.
China is the last of the planet's large economies to accept the inevitability of living with the coronavirus, but it does so at a time when it has been facing the worst wave of infections since the start of the pandemic.
The sudden and abrupt relaxation of restrictions is putting enormous pressure on the health system, especially in Beijing, which had become one of the epicenters of the outbreak in early December.
International epidemiologists warn that millions of deaths could occur during the winter, for which three waves are predicted.
The actual number of infections and deaths is impossible to track.
The National Health Commission stopped publishing daily case numbers on Sunday, days after changing the methodology for counting deaths.
Now, only those deaths whose primary cause is pneumonia or respiratory failure will be recognized, an approach different from that applied in the rest of the world.
Officially, China has only registered 5,241 deaths from covid since the start of the pandemic, and nine of them in December, despite the fact that hospitals and crematoriums in the capital say they are overwhelmed.