Beijing's Asterisk is Gone for Good
Your summer travel plans can finally commence – as the dreaded asterisk in the Travel Journey Card (行程卡 xingchengka) is finally gone for good.
The State Council today announced it's ditching the asterisk altogether nationwide, according to a report from Beijing Youth Daily.
The system, which has been in place for two years, saw an asterisk used for any city containing an elevated risk area. The system was meant to be used by destination cities to screen travelers. In many cases this made it impossible for people to travel freely between cities without the need for quarantine (and in some cases, cities would even block travelers coming from cities with an asterisk outright).
Previously, the only way the asterisk could be removed would be if all areas of a city passed the threshold for being declared low risk – defined as no more than one new local infection in the a specific neighborhood for 14 days.
We originally speculated that Beijing's asterisk would be out the door by Jun 19, though this deadline was extended to Jul 5 when new risk areas were added later.
Though the asterisk is gone, Beijing as of 3.45pm today still has one area listed as elevated risk: a small neighborhood in Changping's Xiaotangshan, whose last infection was recorded eight days ago and is currently classified as high risk. (Lyujiaying, in Chaoyang District, which saw its last infection 14 days ago today, was removed from the list this afternoon).
Meanwhile, newly relaxed risk area designation policies were announced yesterday, which allow areas to be returned to the baseline low risk after as few as seven days.
If this last remaining area is classified using the old rules, it would be 14 days before it is returned to baseline low risk (Jul 5). Under the new rules, a high risk area can go back to low risk in ten days, which means it should be clear by Jul 1.
Nevertheless, even with the asterisk gone for good, it’s still best to double check with your destination city just to be sure of epidemic prevention measures in place there.
READ: Quarantine Times Reduced from 14 + 7 to 7 + 3 Days for All of China
Images: Beijing Youth Daily, the Beijingers
