Two Weeks Quarantine After Arriving Beijing Is Lifted

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COVID-19 新冠肺炎时事

Till 3:50pm, April 30, 2020, the coronavirus COVID-19 is affecting 210 countries and territories around the world and 2 international conveyances. There are totally 3221,653 COVID-19 cases in the world and 228,267 people have died. 

Get informed with the latest epidemic updates, simply send the keyword "Virus" to MORE Hangzhou's official WeChat account: MOREmagazine to get the updated statues.

Beijing to Lower Coronavirus Emergency Response From Highest Level

▲ Image/Caixin

Beijing will lower its coronavirus emergency response from the highest level starting on April 30, according to the Beijing Municipal Health Commission. The capital will move from the country’s highest designation of “level one” to “level two,” out of a three-tier system.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Beijing Municipal Health Commission said that despite the downgrading of the emergency response level, prevention and control work will not be relaxed.

Under the lowered emergency response level travellers arriving in Beijing from “low-risk areas” within China will no longer have to be quarantined for two weeks upon arrival and people staying in hotels in Beijing will no longer have to undergo nucleic acid testing. However, the Commission added that the 14-day quarantine still applies to all international travellers arriving in Beijing from overseas.

Within a half hour after the announcement, flight and hotel searching of online travel sites surged. Bookings of tickets on flights departing from Beijing surged by more than 15-fold, according online travel agency Qunar.com. Sales of plane tickets departing and arriving Beijing increased five-fold, and train ticket sales four-fold, according to Alibaba Group’s travel booking platform Fliggy.

Beijing has not reported any new cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 for 13 days.

Some Tourist Spots in Beijing Are Reopening After 3 Months of Lockdown

▲ The gate of the Forbidden City, closed to visitors on April 19 in Beijing, China. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Some of China's most iconic sightseeing attractions are reopening this week after being shut for nearly three months during the pandemic -- but things won't be exactly as they were before.

In Beijing, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven and the National Museum of China will all reopen by Friday, several news statements announced.

Many other tourist spots are opening on May 1, the first day of a five-day public holiday in the country.

Most of the tourist spots will require visitors to:

Register with their ID cards

Scan their health QR code

Have their temperature measured before entry

Wear a face mask

Several hot spots are opening with limited capacity; the Forbidden City will have a limit of 5,000 visitors per day, drastically lower than the 80,000 limit before it was shut.

The five-day Labor Day holiday is seen as the first sign of recovery in the tourism industry, one of the sectors hardest hit by the coronavirus. Multiple online travel platforms reported overwhelming bookings of Labor Day tours. Online travel booking agency Ctrip estimated that the number of visitor trips during the Labor Day holiday will at least double the subdued number for the Qingming or Tomb-Sweeping Festival in early April.

Hotel and tourism site booking also jumped in Beijing. Users snapped up vouchers for hotels at popular tourism destinations, such as Qinhuangdao, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Sanya. Sales of hotel vouchers at Ctrip increased 650%.

People choosing to stay in Beijing are flooding local tourism sites. Wednesday afternoon, visits to Beijing regional tourism sites nearly tripled from last week, data from Meituan Tickets showed.

Most people are expected to stick close to home as the lifting of quarantine rules in Beijing does not apply to overseas arrivals and people traveling from central Hubei province and other high-risk places.

The tourism industry generally doesn’t expect a nationwide recovery until the epidemic completely ends. International travel remains out of the question, due to travel restrictions imposed by other countries and a lack of flights.

The tourism industry is calling for a “cautious and orderly” reopening. Tourism sites are required to open only outdoor sections and keep facilities closed, according to a notice issued April 13 by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the National Health Commission. Major tourism sites and some restaurants were also told to limit occupancy to as little as 30% of capacity.

The tourism ministry warned people to maintain vigilance and take protective measures while traveling.

Resource: Caixin

Asian Domestic Flights Begin Returning to The Skies

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, people around the world are wondering when life will return to "normal."

The word normal is, of course, relative, but a spate of domestic flight routes slowly opening up in Asia and the Pacific give clues into what the aviation industry could look like in the weeks and months ahead.

China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia are among the countries set to resume or increase domestic flights as the virus wanes.

But don't book your summer vacation just yet -- many of these flights are government subsidized and solely for the purpose of transporting cargo. Though some are open to public bookings, others will only issue tickets to emergency personnel or essential workers who need to get around.

Think of these flights as a dress rehearsal for a gradual re-upping of the aviation industry.

Wuhan Shows The World That The End of Lockdown Is Just The Beginning of The COVID-19 Crisis

▲ Olivia Zhang/Associated Press

All around the world, people are waiting for the announcement that the coronavirus pandemic is contained and they can return to normal life.

But Wuhan, as the epicentre has shown that normal might still be a long way off.

When Wuhan officials eased outgoing travel restrictions on April 8 after a 76-day lockdown, residents and local businesses soon learned the city's actual reopening would be painfully slow.

Despite the lifting of most strict lockdown laws, many stores are still shut, restaurants are restricted to takeaway and even when citizens go outside they still wear protective equipment and try to avoid each other.

The mood on the ground is very different to the official statements. At a news conference on April 8, Luo Ping, an epidemic control official in Wuhan said that some sectors of the city were already back to 100% resumption rate.

But even government-controlled media has suggested that plans to get the city back to 100% production by the end of April might be "too optimistic."

The business owners said they were struggling with zero profits and huge rents, and experts said that it might take the city's economy months to recover, if not longer.

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Latest From the World

Europe is starting to ease restrictions: The Italian region of Calabria will start relaxing restrictions on Thursday. Portugal will end its state of emergency on Saturday. France and Switzerland will both start reopening on May 11, and Greece is encouraging tourists to visit this summer -- subject to social distancing measures.

So are US states: At least 28 states will be partially reopened by the end of the week. Several more states have declared plans to gradually reopen over the next two weeks, including Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida.

But the crisis isn't over: Brazil has seen a spike in fatalities -- the country has now reported more than 5,500 deaths. Japan's health system is struggling to keep up with its spike in cases. And in the UK, some children have developed an inflammatory response to COVID-19. 

The economy is tanked: Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said this is the worst economy in history. We won't go back to pre-pandemic levels for a while, but the third quarter could bring some economic relief, he said.

Some hope of recovery: There are some signs of the pandemic calming around the world. China's new cases are in the low single digits, many of them imported from abroad. Hong Kong, which suffered a second wave last month, has reported no new cases for four days straight. South Korea's new cases are also in the single digits; when this month began, it was reporting 100 cases a day.

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