China has reduced quarantine times for inbound travelers by half, the biggest shift yet in a COVID-19 policy that has left the world’s second-largest economy isolated as it continues to try and eliminate the virus.
Travelers will now only need to spend seven days in a quarantine facility, and then monitor their health at home for a further three days, according to a revised government protocol released Tuesday by China’s National Health Commission. That’s down from 14 days hotel quarantine in many parts of China currently, and as many as 21 days of isolation in the past.
The change, which still leaves China an outlier in a world that has mostly adjusted to living with the virus, comes after Beijing and Shanghai said they had no new locally-transmitted COVID-19 infections on Monday, for the first time since February, following months of bruising curbs.