With the number of infections still rising in many parts of the world, China is under rising pressure to guard against imported Covid-19 cases and domestic outbreaks. China has registered 364 confirmed imported Covid-19 cases since the beginning of April, an average daily increase of more than 20% over the previous month, Mi Feng, Spokesperson with the National Health Commission (NHC), said. Mi also alerted the public to the long-term, complex and uncertain nature of epidemic prevention and control. The number of new Covid-19 cases globally reached more than 5.75 million in the past week, of which more than 40% were in countries that have a land border with China, with several countries experiencing explosive surges. Amid strengthened quarantine measures for inbound travelers, at least two kinds of reagents should be used for nucleic acid tests on the 14^th day after their entry into China, said NHC official Wang Bin, adding that the tests should be carried out by different testing institutions to improve accuracy.

China requires people entering the country to undergo a 14-day quarantine and medical observation before continuing another seven-day health observation at home. They should take nucleic acid tests on the day after the quarantine has been lifted, and again on the seventh day, 

China’s aviation regulator will slightly relax rules to suspend international flights if too many Covid-19 carriers are onboard. Airlines can now choose to cap the load factor on a flight, or the percentage of seats filled, to no more than 40% for four weeks if more than five but less than 10 passengers on a previous flight test positive for Covid-19 after arriving in China, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said. Previously, such flights would have to be suspended for two weeks. The new rules came into effect on May 1, CAAC added. China has drastically cut international flights since March last year. A “Five One” policy allows mainland carriers to fly just one flight a week on one route to any country and foreign airlines to operate just one flight a week to China. But as the coronavirus situation in China is gradually brought under control, it has allowed more foreign airlines to resume services to China.

Delta Air Lines increased seating capacity on flights between Shanghai and the United States from May 1. The Atlanta-based carrier will reopen middle seats to passengers on all flights between China and the U.S., which will increase capacity by nearly 20%. Middle seats have been blocked to reduce contact between passengers since the coronavirus outbreak. However, the carrier is still capping capacity on flights to China at 75% to abide by  CAAC regulations. Delta also resumed service between Shanghai and Seattle, and is also operating four weekly flights between Shanghai and Detroit via Seoul. Passengers will not be required to disembark during the stopover in Seoul. Currently, most people traveling between the U.S. and China are students studying abroad. In addition to Delta, United Airlines is operating four weekly passenger flights between San Francisco and Shanghai. Chinese carriers, including Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Xiamen Air, are operating flights between Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xiamen and Los Angeles and New York. 

The U.S. announced it would ease restrictions on Chinese and other foreign students to enter the U.S. this fall. Around 372,000 Chinese accounted for 35% of international students in the U.S. in the 2019-20 academic year. However, most students would not be able to obtain visas in time due to the huge backlog. Following the U.S. announcement, both fares and demand for China-U.S. air routes surged five-fold in just one day, according to Chinese online travel platform Qunar. A customer service representative from Trip.com said that all direct flights from Beijing and Shanghai to New York during July and August have sold out and the remaining ones are mainly transfer flights via Hong Kong.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to soon give emergency approval for China’s two main Covid-19 vaccines. One of the vaccines is made by state-owned Sinopharm and the other by the private company Sinovac Biotech. China has already injected millions of doses of both vaccines at home and has exported them to many countries, particularly in Latin America, Asia and Africa. An emergency listing from the WHO is an indication to national regulators of a shot’s safety and efficacy, and would allow the Chinese vaccines to be included in COVAX, the global program to provide vaccines mainly to poor countries. So far, the WHO has given emergency approval to vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna. 

The Chinese government also announced the establishment of a new central-level agency – the National Administration of Disease Prevention and Control, and appointed Wang Hesheng, Vice Minister of the National Health Commission (NHC) as Director-General of the new agency. 

This overview is based on reporting by the China Daily, Shanghai Daily and Global Times.