BEIJING, China – December 27 (ONLINE) People in China have reacted with joy and rushed to plan trips overseas after Beijing said it would scrap mandatory Covid quarantine for overseas arrivals that will end almost three years of self-imposed isolation.
In a snap move late on Monday, China said from January 8 inbound travellers would no longer be required to quarantine on arrival in a further unwinding of hardline coronavirus controls that had that torpedoed its economy and sparked nationwide protests.
Online searches for flights abroad surged on the news, with travel platform Tongcheng seeing an 850 percent jump in searches and a ten-fold jump in enquiries about visas, according to state media reports.
Rival platform Trip.com Group said the volume of searches for popular overseas destinations rose by 10 times year-on-year within half an hour of the announcement.
Users were particularly keen on trips to Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and South Korea, it added.
“I felt like the epidemic is finally over,” said Beijing office worker Fan Chengcheng, 27. “The travel plans I made three years ago may now become a reality.”
Shanghai resident Ji Weihe said the move would make China “benefit the economy, peoples’ lives and their desires to go out and travel”.
But some Chinese may face hurdles when they do go abroad, with Japan announcing that it would require Covid-19 tests on arrival for travellers from mainland China from Friday.
Rising cases in China, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, were “causing growing concern in Japan.”
Follow the PNI Facebook page for the latest news and updates.
