The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Politburo held a meeting on November 10 to review its COVID policy, including 20 measures it proposed on “optimizing” the control of COVID. The next day, the State Council published the 20 measures.
Some highlights of the new rules are:
Measure #1: Those who had close contact with a COVID patient will follow the “5+3” rule (five days of centralized quarantine followed by an additional three days of home quarantine) instead of the current “7+3” rule.
Measure #2: Stop identifying the second-level contacts (people who had contact with the people who had contact with COVID a patient)
Measure #3: People from high-risk regions going to other places will follow a seven-day home quarantine instead of the current centralized quarantine.
Measure #4: Adjust region’s risk level from “high-media-low” to “high-low.” High-risk is narrowed to a building or a unit (in the past the control was more limited to the residential community which usually is a walled residential compound with many buildings within).
Measure #6: Regions with no COVID cases do not need to have all-people PCR test. The “two tests per day” or “three tests per day” practices will be stopped.
Measure #7: Eliminate the inbound flight meltdown mechanism (stop the airline’s next flight(s) if COVID patients were detected on the current flight). Passengers only need to provide one negative COVID test in the past 48 hours (instead of two negative tests).
Measure #10: People coming into China from other countries will follow the “5+3” rule instead of the current “7+3” rule.
Measure #12: Promote COVID vaccinations.
Sources:
1. People’s Daily, November 10, 2022
http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2022/1110/c1024-32563558.html
2. People’s Daily, November 12, 2022
http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2022-11/12/nw.D110000renmrb_20221112_2-04.htm