BEIJING - People in China reacted with joy and rushed to book overseas flights on Tuesday after Beijing said it would scrap mandatory Covid-19 quarantine for overseas arrivals, ending almost three years of self-imposed isolation.

In a snap move late on Monday, China said that from Jan 8, inbound travellers would no longer be required to quarantine upon arrival, in a further unwinding of stringent Covid-19 controls that had torpedoed its economy and sparked nationwide protests.

On Tuesday, the country’s immigration authority said it would resume issuing visas for mainland residents to travel overseas from Jan 8.

Cases have surged nationwide as key pillars of the containment policy have fallen away, with the authorities acknowledging that the outbreak is “impossible” to track and doing away with much-maligned official case tallies. 

Still, Chinese social media users reacted with joy to the end of restrictions that have kept the country largely closed off to the outside world since March 2020.

One top-voted comment on the Weibo platform proclaimed: “It’s over... spring is coming.”

“Preparing for my trip abroad!” wrote another user of the Twitter-like site. A third wrote: “I hope the price of the return ticket doesn’t rise again!” 

Online searches for flights abroad surged on the news, state media reported, with the travel platform Tongcheng seeing an 850 per cent jump in searches and a tenfold jump in inquiries about visas.

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. 

Residents of Hong Kong also flooded the Internet to search for flights to key Chinese cities.

Searches for flights from Hong Kong to China on Trip.com and Ctrip, the two sub-brands of Trip.com Group, jumped around 521 per cent late on Monday evening versus the same time a week earlier on Dec 19.

The top five destinations were Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Nanjing, with search traffic up 1,039 per cent for financial hub Shanghai, and 718 per cent for capital Beijing.

Searches for Hangzhou rose 662 per cent, for Chengdu 399 per cent, and for Nanjing 411 per cent.

“Travel from abroad to China can only go up,” said Mr Mike Arnot, an airline industry commentator and spokesman for aviation analytics company Cirium.

“Flights to China by the world’s major airlines are down more than 92 per cent in December compared with December 2019.”

Carriers including British Airways, United Airlines and Qantas Airways stopped flying to China entirely during the pandemic, and it “will take some time to rebuild their schedules”, Mr Arnot said.

Those airlines that have restarted services to Hong Kong should benefit from higher load factors on their existing flights to the city, which is a major hub for connections to China, he added.

The announcement effectively brought the curtain down on a zero-Covid regime of mass testing, strict lockdowns and long quarantines that has roiled supply chains and buffeted business engagement with the world’s second-largest economy.

“The overwhelming view is just relief,” said Mr Tom Simpson, managing director for China at the China-Britain Business Council.

“It brings an end to three years of very significant disruption.”

An uptick in international trade missions is now expected for 2023, although the full resumption of business operations is likely to be gradual, as airlines slowly bring more flights online and companies tweak their China strategies for 2023, he said.

Nonetheless, the announcement was “very, very welcome”, Mr Simpson said. 

Still, not all receiving countries are reciprocating with similarly open borders.

Japan will require a negative Covid-19 test upon arrival for travellers from China due to the rapid spread of the virus in the country, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Tuesday.

Travellers from China who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days, he told reporters, adding that the new border measures for China will go into effect from midnight on Dec 30. 

The government will also limit requests from airlines to increase flights to China, he said.

Cases have surged nationwide following China’s easing, in an outbreak that the authorities have admitted is now impossible to track.

And in the face of mounting concerns that the country’s wave of infections is not being accurately reflected in official statistics, Beijing’s National Health Commission (NHC) last Saturday said it would no longer publish daily tallies of the number of cases.

That followed a decision last week to narrow the criteria by which Covid-19 fatalities were counted – a move that experts said would suppress the number of deaths attributable to the virus.

The winter surge comes ahead of two major public holidays in January – New Year’s Day and Chinese New Year.

Meanwhile, hospitals and crematoriums across the country have been overflowing with Covid-19 patients and victims, with studies estimating that around one million people could die over the next few months.

China reported one new Covid-19 death for Dec 26, compared with no deaths a day earlier, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday. The death toll was increased to 5,242.

Major cities are now grappling with shortages of medicine, while emergency medical facilities are strained by an influx of undervaccinated elderly patients.

Beijing has insisted throughout the wave of infections that the country is prepared to weather the storm – and urged people to take responsibility for their own health.

“We need the public to properly protect themselves, continue to cooperate with the implementation of relevant prevention and control measures,” Dr Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist and the head of an expert group at the NHC tasked with responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, told state news agency Xinhua.

“We need to shift the focus of our work from infection prevention and control to medical treatment.”

But that has also led to concerns about the quick return to normal life.

“Domestic infections are still rising,” one Weibo user wrote.

“Isn’t it obviously trying to get everyone infected,” the person asked, referring indirectly to the government.

Another Internet user wrote about a neighbour who died and a rumour that coffins were in short supply.

“This is the result of opening up,” the person wrote.

“Why must we open up? Why can’t we consider the vulnerable groups first?”

AFP, BLOOMBERG, REUTERS