Finally, China Lifts Mandatory COVID-19 Testing For Incoming Travellers

Beijing: Come August 30, China will no longer require a negative COVID-19 test result from incoming travellers, reported AP.

The announcement was made by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin here on Monday.

As part of those measures, travellers entering China were required to quarantine for weeks at government-designated hotels, even as the world had moved on from the coronavirus menace — declared as a global pandemic by World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2020 – as devastated nations sought to rebuild economies and restore normalcy in the lives of humans.

In May this year, WHO declared that COVID-19 no longer poses a public health emergency of international concern.

But China, which pursued a ‘zero-COVID’ policy till December 2022, has continued to exercise some caution in certain areas like travellers flying into the country.

The Communist country witnessed a COVID surge earlier this year also, with around 37 million people being infected with the virus in the span of one week in January.

Now, the country has removed another stringent measure to help the world’s second-largest economy – which had become sluggish, leading to rising unemployment and unrest on some places – make a gradual recovery.