China has opened its borders to people from other countries for the first time since March 2020, when it put limits on travel.
No longer will incoming travelers have to stay in quarantine. This is a big change in the country’s Covid policy as it fights a rise in cases.
They will still need proof that a PCR test done within 48 hours of traveling was negative.
Many people are happy about the move because it means they will be closer to family.
In the next few weeks, about 400,000 people from Hong Kong are expected to go to mainland China. There will be long lines for flights to cities like Beijing and Xiamen.
On Sunday, double-decker buses full of people, including college students going home, arrived at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge to catch buses to the province of Guangdong.
One man told the BBC that he hadn’t seen his extended family in five years and that he just bought a ticket back to China and couldn’t contain his excitement.
A woman told Reuters that she hadn’t seen her parents in years, even though one of them had colon cancer, and that she was “so, so happy.”
The country is now open again at the start of “chun yun,” the first time people travel for the Lunar New Year. Before the pandemic, it was the biggest annual gathering of people going home to see their families around the world.
This Lunar New Year, there are likely to be two billion trips, which is twice as many as last year.
Li Hua, who came from the UK to China for the festival because that’s where her family lives, said it was a lot of fun “It’s been way too long since I’ve been back,” she said. “I’m so glad to be back and breathe Chinese air. So glad, so glad “.
Mark Clayton went to Hong Kong with his wife and baby, and then they went back to their home in Zhuhai, Guandong. He told the BBC that his trip home was “almost as easy as it was before Covid.”
He said, “We didn’t even have to show them the PCR. We just scanned a code and filled out a very quick customs form… and then we were on our way.”
Young people in China are infecting themselves because they are worried about the elderly.
In China, how many Covid cases are there?
But some people worry that opening the borders will lead to more people getting Covid-19.
Some local bus drivers at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge told the BBC that they are worried about getting the virus from tourists and want their companies to do more to protect them.
Over the past three years, China had one of the strictest Covid health policies in the world. This policy led to many lockdowns and frequent testing, and it had a big effect on the economy of the country.
The government changed its mind about this policy after a fire in a high-rise building in the Xinjiang region killed 10 people and sparked protests all over the country. Authorities denied what many Chinese people thought, which was that the long-term Covid restrictions caused the deaths.
Since China gave up on the most important parts of its “Covid zero” policy, hospitals and crematoriums have been said to be overflowing. However, the country has stopped publishing its case numbers and only reported two deaths on Saturday.
On the same day, the Chinese government shut down more than 1,000 social media accounts that said bad things about how it was handling the virus.
Due to the expected rise in cases and travel out of China, many countries, including the UK, are requiring people who come from China to pass a COVID-19 test. This has angered the Chinese government.
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