Mainland’s easing of COVID-19 restrictions comes at right time

On Jan 8, 2023, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government and the Chinese mainland government officially resumed quarantine-free customs clearance. 

Most ports, which had been suspended for nearly three years, have finally returned to normal operations. “Welcome Home” signs can be seen everywhere in the airport, and the many scenes of people welcoming relatives with flowers and of relatives hugging each other and crying are touching.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said that since the resumption of normal travel between Hong Kong and the mainland, operations at all ports have been smooth. When the online reservation system opened, the authorities set an upper limit on the number of people crossing the border via three land checkpoints in each direction at 50,000, which is in line with actual needs; and to cater to the extra demand expected during the buildup to Lunar New Year, the upper limit for each-way travel via land checkpoints has been temporarily increased further between Jan 18-21 to 65,000. Lee said that he will continue to observe the situation and review operations with the mainland authorities to determine whether the quota needs to be adjusted.

Some people have complained that the resumption of quarantine-free travel has come too late. They believe the resumption should have happened in July or August last year, when many countries declared the pandemic to be over and eased their pandemic prevention and control measures.

Those who hold this view are ignorant of China’s national conditions. China has a population of 1.4 billion, which is nearly twice that of Europe and four times that of the United States. If the prevention and control measures had been eased too soon, the consequences would have been disastrous. Until the borders had reopened, the official cumulative death toll in the Chinese mainland stood at 5,269 cases, or 3.7 deaths per million people. The cumulative number of deaths in the US is close to 1.1 million, with 3,214.4 deaths per million people. The per capita mortality in the US was more than 800 times that of China at that time. In other words, if the per capita mortality in China were the same as that in the US, the number of deaths in China would have reached more than 4.5 million.

Recently, with the relaxation of pandemic prevention and control measures in the mainland, the number of infections has risen rapidly, and China’s National Health Commission announced that the number of COVID-related deaths recorded between Dec 8 and Jan 12 was 59,938. The US, Japan and other countries responded to China’s easing of travel restrictions by requiring inbound passengers from China to have tested negative. However, Singapore’s Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung recently stated that in the last four weeks of 2022, the number of confirmed cases entering Singapore from China accounted for less than 5 percent of imported cases, which is far lower than the proportion of imported cases from other countries and regions. There is no need to tighten anti-COVID-19 measures for visitors arriving from China. These figures show that China’s easing strategy and timing have had little impact on personnel exchanges.

Additionally, after the fifth wave of COVID-19 attack erupted in Hong Kong, a team of experts evaluated the morbidity and mortality rates of omicron, as well as the barrier effects of the vaccines, and learned precisely about omicron. By the second half of last year, when outbreaks occurred in many provinces on the mainland, experts had a better grasp of the characteristics of omicron through their experience gained in fighting the virus. After it was confirmed that the morbidity and mortality rates of omicron had fallen to an “acceptable” level, the central government decisively relaxed the anti-COVID-19 regime based on the experts’ advice. The aligned anti-COVID-19 policies of the mainland and Hong Kong have created the conditions necessary for a resumption of cross-border quarantine-free travel. It should be said that the timing of the border reopening was very appropriate.

The author is co-convener of China Retold, a Legislative Council member, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.