China announced on Friday that it was relaxing certain measures against Covid-19, including the time needed to be spent in quarantine on arrival in the country, which will now be reduced from 10 to 8 days.
The Asian country is the last major economy to maintain a strict health policy against the coronavirus, with borders remaining closed to most foreign nationals.
A government memo published on the Internet by state-run CCTV also announced the end of the much-maligned “circuit breaker” mechanism. Under this rule, international flights to China were cancelled for one or two weeks if too many infected passengers were found on arrival.
This announcement is a relief for many travellers, who until now have been afraid that their flights would be cancelled at the last minute. They were often forced to wait several weeks or even months outside China before finding seats on a flight.
Another piece of good news for travellers from abroad, whether Chinese or not, is that they will have to provide the result of a single PCR test carried out within 48 hours before boarding their flight to China, as opposed to two until now.
