(ATF) Chinese authorities are desperately trying to discourage the millions set to travel home for New Year’s as a second wave of Covid-19 spreads out across the country.
Annually, Chinese citizens usually rack up around 3 billion trips during the New Year Festival, which takes place in mid-February this year. Many work far from home and it is their only chance each year to visit family.
But, with the new strain of the virus already seeing city lockdowns and increased social restrictions, the Central Government is striving to limit what is annually the largest human migration on Earth.
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The Chinese CDC is telling citizens to go outside for no more than two hours. For those who insist on travelling they will need to take a Covid-19 test – and will be retested every seven days and visited by authorities.
The second wave has sparked a large number of city lockdowns across the country.
And to help rural areas cope with the pandemic’s resurgence, The National Health Commission reported that the State Council has created an epidemic prevention and control mechanism plan.
The plan pointed out that returning migrant workers need to arrive with a negative result of a valid new coronavirus nucleic acid test within seven days.
HOME MONITORING
After returning home, they will have to implement home health monitoring for 14 days. During this period, they will not gather or move around, and must carry out a nucleic acid test every seven days.
All towns (sub-districts) and administrative villages (residential committees) shall implement a responsibility system, implement a management grid of returnees, involving registration, health monitoring and handling of ‘abnormal situations’.
Chinese officials have revealed that recent sporadic outbreaks and clustered epidemics in local areas have increased significantly, exposing lax prevention and control awareness, weak prevention and control capabilities, and prevention and control issues in rural areas.
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