Return from Wuhan with care
Stringent health tests, possible isolation await migrants
After the end of a 76-day lockdown, people stranded in Wuhan are heading to cities across the country where they usually work and live, but despite their cheer, returnees reached by the Global Times noted some confusion in policies that made their journeys less than smooth.
On Wednesday as the travel ban ended, some 55,000 people left the city on trains and more than 7,100 departed by air. Some 20 percent of them headed for places outside Hubei Province, with South China’s Guangdong Province, neighboring Henan Province and East China’s Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces as popular destinations, media reported.
Amid concerns over silent carriers, different cities have different policies to receive Wuhan returnees while making sure the COVID-19 virus will not be resurrected.
The Global Times learned from returnees that places including Henan Province and Dongguan and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province require a free nucleic acid test upon arrival and a 14-day home quarantine. Wuxi in Jiangsu Province and Dalian in Liaoning Province allow returnees to walk around if their free nucleic acid test results are negative, but before that all are required to stay at designated quarantine centers.
“I was lucky because I did the free nucleic acid test beforehand and could finally board the train back to Beijing on time,” Cai Mengyi, told the Global Times as she rode on Thursday’s G4802 bullet train back to the capital city.
Only with a negative test result, a green health code and registration on the Jingxinxiangzhu app with Beijing authorities can a person board a train back, Cai said, noting she saw people being stopped at the check-in area of Wuhan North Station for failing to provide a test result.
Beijing authorities Wednesday announced that Wuhan people coming to Beijing should take nucleic acid tests twice – one within seven days before departure, one before they finish a 14-day quarantine after arriving in Beijing. The influx will be controlled at about 1,000 people a day.
Cai’s community in Chaoyang district in Beijing will pick her up at the train station and she is allowed to follow a home quarantine after communication with her landlord and a “considerate roommate” who is also a Hubei native.
Shanghai overall does not require returning green code holders to take the nucleic acid test or undergo a quarantine, but the city’s Minhang district government said on its official Weibo account that policies may vary at different communities, which have their own rules based on specific situations.
Companies may also require employees to take the test and undergo a quarantine period before resumption of work, the government said.
The Global Times saw on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo that some Shanghai residents urged the municipal government to require nucleic acid tests for all returnees as they could be silent carriers and spread the coronavirus to others.
Yang Zhanqiu, a Wuhan-based virologist, noted that asking returnees to take the test is a safer method, although it was a bit “wasteful” as only a very few green code holders could be asymptomatic carriers. If receiving governments and employers want 100-percent guarantees, they should cover the test costs, Yang told the Global Times.