Thousands of people from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong crossed the border on Sunday after Beijing lifted COVID-19 quarantine requirements, despite the recent COVID-19 surge in the region.
Since early 2020, people from mainland China could not visit Hong Kong without being quarantined on arrival. Quarantine requirements also existed for travelers entering mainland China. This restriction was lifted on Jan. 8.
Instead, people who wish to travel to the other side only need to show results of a negative PCR test within 48 hours before departure. Any individual showing symptoms of COVID-19 will be required to take a rapid antigen test.
The lifting of border restrictions with Hong Kong comes as mainland China has seen an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 infections. By the end of the third week of December, up to 250 million people in the country were estimated to have been infected.
This includes 14,870 arrivals to Hong Kong and 34,756 exits. People who want to come to Hong Kong through the four land ports are required to book a slot online.
Another 58,000 crossed via air and sea, traveling by plane or ferry.
The government has planned a phased opening of the border. In the first phase, Hong Kong has restricted daily crossings to roughly 60,000 people in both directions.
COVID Within China, Global Entry Restrictions
In a recent press conference, Kan Quancheng, director of the health commission for central Henan province, revealed that the region had an infection rate of 89 percent as of Jan. 6, The Guardian reported.Henan is the third-most populous province in China with a population of 99.4 million people. Based on Quancheng’s infection estimate, about 88.5 million people in Henan may have been infected.
Several nations are strengthening restrictions on arrivals from China, including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, India, South Korea, Japan, Canada, Spain, and Qatar.
The European Union recently recommended that member states require COVID-19 tests from Chinese visitors prior to their departures. China insisted that the measure was “discriminatory.”
Beijing made similar allegations against the United States after it mandated COVID-19 testing for all travelers from China.
Infecting the World
In a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders“ program, Gordon Chang, author and a senior fellow at Gatestone Institute, said that Beijing likely intends to spread the COVID-19 virus across the world as it rejects the international travel curbs.Despite the first COVID-19 infections appearing in late 2019, China only informed the world about it in January 2020. This delay allowed the virus to develop into a global pandemic. When several nations imposed travel restrictions on Chinese visitors in February 2020, Beijing lashed out against them, insisting that these nations were “sowing panic.”
When putting these things together, China seems to have “deliberately spread this disease beyond its borders,” Chang said.
“The reason why we need that context is because we’re seeing something similar today. As this disease … is ripping through China, they are now opening up the doors to Chinese leaving [the] country for tourism. And they are not sharing sequencing. They’re not telling the world what’s actually going on in China right now,” Chang said.
At present, seven crossing points between Hong Kong and mainland China have been opened. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee intends to expand this number to 14 crossing points. According to media reports from Hong Kong, about 300,000 travel bookings to China have already been made.
