Beijing Overseas Returnees Now Subject to Two Weeks Quarantine Plus One Week Home Observation

All international arrivals entering Beijing will now have to complete an additional week of home observation on top of the 14 days of centralized or home quarantine already required for returnees. The deputy secretary-general of the Beijing municipal government announced the new regulations at a press conference on Tuesday, adding that incomers must also designate a 'health monitoring contact person.' Though foreigners are still unable to enter China, the change means that they will likely be subject to an extra week of quarantine when the country re-opens its borders to them.

Other than the need to provide daily health checks and the inability to leave the house, the exact requirements for those under home observation were not outlined during the press conference. It was stated however that individual requirements would be communicated to the person via text message, presumably upon the completion of their two-week stint in state quarantine.

As officials reiterated at the end of March, all people who enter the greater Beijing area must undergo quarantine, without exception. Whether returnees are quarantined in a centralized location or at home is dependent on the returnee’s community, their age, or preexisting health conditions.

The change follows a mid-April case in Shuangjing, which a returnee completed two weeks of quarantine, tested negative for COVID-19 with a nucleic acid test, but fell ill two days after returning home. The returnee then infected three other members of the household and forced over 60 'close contacts,' to redo their quarantine. This also resulted in Chaoyang District being classified as a high-risk zone.

Most experts estimate that the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may incubate in the body for one to 14 days before symptoms appear, averaging an incubation period of five days. However, as the aforementioned returnee shows, the virus may be carried asymptomatically for even longer in some rare cases.

In addition to a growing number of cases in South Korea that have shown patients may not always attain immunity after recovery – a phenomenon that could either be caused by reinfection or from remnants of the virus resulting in false positives – cases like this illustrate just how little we know about the disease, which is why extra precautions are still being taken.

READ: Travel May Be On the Table This May Holiday... Unless You've Been to Chaoyang District

Images: Sarah McCutcheon (via Unsplash)