Pandemic: China reopens borders after three years of strict restrictions due to covid-19

January 8th China reopens to the world. On that day, the provision that makes entry into the country, closed to foreigners for three years, when the coronavirus pandemic broke out, will come into force.

The new provision eliminates the famous quarantine in centralized hotels for which it was mandatory all arriving passengers in the country.

Control measures are also lifted imported goods. Business travel, student exchanges and family visits of foreign residents are reactivated after a long time.

class B disease

The State Council justified this measure on Monday by lowering the level of covid-19 of the class A infectious disease, the highest level, a class B disease.

Now, the official term China will use will be “new coronavirus infection”.

This reduction puts an end to the official communication of new daily cases, an announcement that has been maintained since the first days of the pandemic, although certainly already offered opaque data and very far from reality.

one requirement

The announcement of the provision, which only maintains the obligation to provide a negative result Try COVID-19 48 hours before of the exit, caused an avalanche of purchases of airline tickets.

The expected date of January 8 coincides with the beginning of a month’s holiday on the occasion of the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year event which it mobilizes millions of Chinese.

The long-awaited news stunned many who had expected the restrictions to last until after the Chinese New Year, which this year falls on January 22, 2023.

International air traffic has been reduced over the past three years to about 5% of traffic before the pandemic began.

Reduced flights and stringent requirements have kept airline ticket prices exorbitant. Now, with the opening of new air routes, announced since last December 7, prices are lowered significantly.

China’s opening comes amid relentless rise in covid-19 infections, putting severe pressure on health care system, with saturated hospitals, fever clinics opening in convention centers or old testing centers, as well as medical professionals with double shift

After the announcements of the easing of the restrictions and with the increase of the infected in China, now they are other countries those starting to require Covid-19 tests to allow entry of Chinese nationals, for example Japan or Italy.

A negative effect on the economy

The benefits of Chinese industrial enterprises are set to end the year with a decrease compared to 2021 recorded in the first eleven months of the year due to the drop in production and ex-factory prices due to the restrictions and inconvenience caused by the ” Zero -Covid” in Beijing.

Industrial profits in China fell 3.6 percent between January and November compared to the same period in 2021, that country’s National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

The latest tightening of restrictions in Novemberbefore the main Covid-zero policy measures were lifted earlier this month, it meant that the decline was even greater than the 3% recorded between January and October.

“Industrial production slowed and pressures on business operations increased in November due to factors such as a resurgence of coronavirus cases and insufficient demand,” said Zhu Hong, the state agency’s chief statistician.

Although the statistics office did not release data for November, Bloomberg projections estimate the annual decline for that month was 8.9%.

Clarín writing with information from RFI and Bloomberg

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