China is to lift the requirement for international travellers to quarantine from 8 January in the latest break from its zero-COVID policy after protests.
The rule, which requires arrivals to quarantine for five days at a hotel and three days at home, has already been scaled down from previous requirements to quarantine for as much as three weeks.
When the requirement is lifted next month, travellers to China will still need a negative COVID-19 test 48 hours before departure, the health commission said.
The government has substantially rolled back on restrictive COVID-19 lockdown policies in recent weeks after unusual public protest in late November.
The change were made as part of a wider downgrading of the risk posed by the virus in the country as the economy weakened and the Chinese public grew tired of strict lockdowns.
As a result of the rollback, officials estimated 250 million people are likely to have contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December, leaked notes showed.
Last week China’s biggest city, Shanghai, had 5.43 million positive cases among its 25 million residents.
Millions could die due to the relatively low number of fully vaccinated people in the country.
But the true number of positive cases may not be revealed as asymptomatic cases are no longer recorded by Chinese officials.
The world’s second largest economy had effectively been shut off from the world for the best part of three years. An effective ban on international tourism had been in place since early 2020.
The latest policy shift paves the way for a greater economic recovery, once the wave of infections passes.
Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier and its second most powerful person, had publicly acknowledged the financial harm wrought by the pandemic and said the relaxation of strict lockdown rules will help the economy “pick up”.
China had pledged to improve the economy next year, after growth slowed due to the prolonged lockdowns, and economists reported seeing signals of focus on boosting gross domestic product, a measure of economic activity.
Retail sales had fallen nearly 6% in the year to November, worse than analyst expected. The economy is on course to miss its 5.5% annual growth target, a goal already the lowest in decades.
China has managed to avoid the waves of infections experienced by almost every country in the world through it’s programme of strict lockdowns.
