China announces end to COVID-19 travel code service

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – China will no longer require its digital travel code service from Tuesday onwards amid measures to relax the “zero-COVID" policy in the country.

Following the measures announced by the Chinese State Council last week, a statement by the “Travel Card” operator, Baidu, said the digital service will be “officially offline” from Dec. 13 midnight.

“Communication itinerary card inquiry channels such as text messages, web pages, WeChat applets, Alipay applets, and APPs will be offline simultaneously,” the statement added.

The Travel Card was in service since March 6, 2020, three months after the first cases were reported in Wuhan city of China in December 2019.

After witnessing demonstrations in recent weeks, China last Wednesday announced loosening its strict “Zero COVID" policy, including a reduction in the frequency of nucleic tests.

The country’s National Health Commission (NHC) said the joint prevention and control mechanism of China's State Council released 10 new measures, allowing infections with mild or no symptoms to take home quarantine and reduce the frequency of nucleic acid testing.

Under the new measures, public places will no longer require nucleic acid test results.

The NHC said test results and health code will "no longer be required for cross-regional travel."

According to the NHC, China on Sunday reported 2,240 new confirmed infections, besides 6,598 new asymptomatic cases.

China has reported 365,312 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 5,235 deaths, since December 2019.