China will drop a requirement for inbound travellers to take Covid-19 PCR tests starting from January 8, customs authorities said on Wednesday.
PCR checks for imported chilled and frozen foods will also be dropped, China’s General Administration of Customs said.
China’s management of Covid-19 is set to be downgraded to the less strict Category B from the top-level Category A from January 8, the health authority said on Monday.
The country will also gradually resume accepting applications for international passenger charter flights from Chinese and foreign airlines, China’s civil aviation authority said on Wednesday. China will also fully restore pre-pandemic flight procedures and requirements by the summer and autumn seasons in 2023, it added.
Chinese hospitals and funeral homes were under intense pressure on Wednesday as a surging Covid-19 wave drained resources, while the scale of the outbreak and doubts over official data prompted some countries to consider new travel rules on Chinese visitors.
China reported three new Covid-related deaths for Tuesday, up from one for Monday — numbers that are inconsistent with what funeral parlours are reporting, as well as with the experience of much less populous countries after they re-opened.
Staff at Huaxi, a big hospital in the southwestern city of Chengdu, said they were “extremely busy” caring for Covid patients. “I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and this is the busiest I have ever known it,” said one ambulance driver outside the hospital who declined to be identified.
There were long queues inside and outside the hospital’s emergency department and at an adjacent fever clinic on Tuesday evening. Most of those arriving in ambulances were given oxygen to help with their breathing. “Almost all of the patients have Covid,” one emergency department pharmacy staff member said.
The hospital has no stocks of Covid-specific medicine and can only provide drugs for symptoms such as coughing, she said.
Car parks around the Dongjiao funeral home, one of the biggest in Chengdu, were full. Funeral processions were constant as smoke billowed from the crematorium.
“We have to do this about 200 times a day now,” said one funeral worker. “We are so busy we don’t even have time to eat. This has been the case since the opening up. Before it was around 30-50 a day.”
“Many have died from Covid,” said another worker.
At another Chengdu crematorium, privately owned Nanling, staff were equally busy. “There have been so many deaths from Covid lately,” one worker said. “Cremation slots are all fully booked. You can’t get one until the new year, maybe January 3 at the earliest.”
China has said it only counts deaths of Covid patients caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as Covid-related.
Zhang Yuhua, an official at the Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, said most recent patients were elderly and critically ill with underlying diseases. She said the number of patients receiving emergency care had increased to 450-550 per day, from about 100 before, according to state media.
The China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s fever clinic in Beijing was also “packed” with grey-haired patients, state media reported.
Nurses and doctors have been asked to work while sick and retired medical workers in rural communities were being rehired to help. Some cities have been struggling to secure supplies of anti-fever drugs.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong will cancel its stringent Covid-19 rules from Thursday, city leader John Lee said, meaning that arrivals will no longer need to do mandatory PCR tests while the city’s vaccine pass would also be scrapped.
