They should let you go get those tests. Honestly, if they make you stay in the room the whole time, why bother switching hotels? Just stay at the quarantine hotel another week, if that allowed. I’m pretty sure this is what the policy is moving towards anyhow.

This pattern means that once you get to 27 days before your flight, if your flight isn't suspended, then you should deliberately infect 6 people with SARS-CoV-2 and then put them on the flight 3 weeks before yours. Then, yours is guaranteed to go. If it's 6 weeks before your flight and that flight isn't suspended, then you can repeat the same pattern, which makes the 3 weeks prior flight guaranteed to go and guarantees that you'll have an opportunity to plant 6 more people on it, etc. You can prove by mathematical induction that you can make it where your flight is guaranteed to go by planting at least 6 infected people on the flights 3, 6, 9, 12, etc., weeks before your flight.

I am totally lost here by China's 14+7 policy.

1) If there is a possibility to infect others after 14 day quarantine, why allow you to move to another hotel? Or. why even allow you to return to your hometown with exposure to the public (by train, plane etc)?

2) So the only sensible thing to do is to put you in quarantine hotel for 21 days. But here is my issue. Almost all COVID infections show symptoms after 4-5 days. Very, very rare case it exceeds 14 days. I feel that recent positive case in Shanghai got infected in quarantine. Not in USA.

Only in China you hear cases after 14, 21 or even 35 days........ Chinese officials and Chinese people want to blame someone. This is beyond absurd.

Is it possible that the hotels themselves are exaggerating the requirements, i.e. not an actual gov. policy?
Hotel: "We'll let you stay, but you better stick to your room, and not use our facilities!"

It is quite literally the rule. Mine was even more ridiculous. I completed 14 days quarantine in Xi'an, then flew on to Shenzhen. I was on a domestic flight, no separation, bus gated to the airport and left. I was free to go in shops at the airport, before reporting to a hotel to be 'locked up' again for seven further days - after getting a taxi from Shenzhen Airport to the quarantine hotel. Entire time I had a green health code for both Xi'an and Shenzhen.

Well, I had a GREEN HEALTH code the WHOLE time, even during initial quarantine! :rolleyes:

Yes, if someone gets COVID in China, it is their fault, and then it bubbles up to be the fault of the relevant government official.

Since Beijing (the city) already has an omicron case and tons of athletes will be flying in without quarantine it’s a matter of time until something gives.

Thank you narvik!

The quarantine hotel’s internet was down the last couple of days and I just saw your PM as well.

I managed to get a +7 hotel near the HongQiao airport CBD area. Called and confirmed.

I am told to stay in the room other than going out to do PCR tests. :o

I am told that the code will remain yellow until the end of the 21 -day. Apparently they fixed the problems and now it will only turn green at the end of 21 days and only after both Covid tests (taken during the +7 days) show negative.

I will see if that is indeed the change after I clear my 14-day and 21-day.

My code was green for a few days when I arrived in China earlier last week but it turned red a couple of days ago.

Athletes and any other Olympics personnel are entering a bubble. It's possible something slips through the cracks — as has happened with airplane cleaning staff in other local outbreaks — but it's not like they're going to be roaming all over the city.

Yes, and cases are still being imported in even with 14 or 21 day quarantine.

The Olympics workers will have to do a similar process before “reentering” China but still pose a similar, if not much greater, risk vector. There were many cases detected at the Tokyo Olympics.

This is how someone brought the virus to Guangzhou a few weeks ago I believe. Released from Shanghai, flew to GZ and then tested positive a few days later. The whole thing is getting more and more absurd as Covid becomes more and more transmissible.

Indeed!
Beijingers are told to STAY IN THEIR CAR if they happen to get into an accident with a vehicle traveling in the reserved "Olympic Travel Lane" until the police turn up and give the 'okay' to leave.
If you get out of the car to investigate the accident yourself, you are destined for 14 days quarantine.

(bolding mine)
Yeah, that's how I understood it also.
I had some issues in that the code I needed to travel to Beijing only turned GREEN the day after arrival in Beijing! :rolleyes:
The code I was referring to that was GREEN the whole time somehow had my old passport number connected to it. I never used that one.

If you have changed your passport and leave and return on a new passport your code doesn’t seem to know and it stays green throughout. There are obviously many situations where this could be a bonus.

I think passport number combined with cell phone number determine the color of code.

Next time I'll test my theory. Same passport number. Two cell phones. Use a new cell phone on the entry health form.

My theory: old cell phone shows green, and new cell phone shows red/yellow.

Yep, that's pretty much how this went.
I ended up NOT using this GREEN code with the old number, and changed/updated the app to new passport.

One issue in Beijing if you have multiple mobiles - if you login to the HealthKit using multiple phone numbers, you won't be able to remove the old number from the Health Kit.

Good luck!

Related question - Does anyone here have experience of what happens to the vaccine record (of jabs here in China) when you change passport? I'll have to get a new passport in the next few months so wonder how this will work.

In theory there should be a link in some central database between old and new passport numbers, but I won't be surprised if this doesn't work smoothly. I tried to use my permanent resident card partly for this reason when taking the vaccinations but they insisted that I had to use a passport for identification.

No big deal of course at the moment, but may be needed in the future when travel is practical again and proof of vaccination is needed.

It won’t work.

(Curious only) - can one keep a registration based on (expired) passport, and travel on new passport? If challenged, show both passports together?

I'm not sure the details but it's possible to get an international vaccination yellow card similar to the International WHO booklet. I've seen one and it was official stamped"chopped".

I went to the WHO website and downloaded the PDF file of the yellow book, and printed them on yellow sheets of paper at 100% scale. Cut the printouts into actual yellow book size and bind them pages together.
I presented my custom made yellow book to get chopped and signed when I had the two doses of SinoVac. They even removed the seal stickers with serial number on the vaccine box and pasted into the book for me.

I also did the same when I took the SinoVac flu shot a few months ago.

What's the reason for this? Is this version more 'usable'?

Anyone have clarity on United operating it’s flights OUT of China (PVG-ICN-SFO route) despite being unable to bring passengers in? I’m hoping they’re still flying cargo over and have aircraft available to get me out of Mao 2.0 China shortly.

Not sure why you're confused. You basically answered your own questions.

The +7 exists because the likelihood of infection after 14 days, like you said, is remote. It's a compromise between hardship to the person being quarantined and his risk to the public.

And you know what, I do think there's a possibility that these people were infected during or after quarantine. But most likely from something they brought with them in their suitcase, and not from a source outside of themselves. Again, very low likelihood events.

Only in China do you hear about these outliers because I think other countries would have given up after so many days because they have no ability to determine if it's an infection that occurs afterward due to the presence of locally transmitted disease. In China, there's basically no such local transmission, so that source can be ruled out, relatively.

I believe there were a few hundred cases detected during the Tokyo Olympics, which is actually very few considering that a) there are locally transmitted cases in Tokyo anyways 2) the number of people involved.

Beijing is in a much better situation:
1) much less people involved (Winter Olympics). Maybe by a factor of 10?
2) no local source of transmission (almost)
3) much tighter closed-loop system

Even in Tokyo, there were no outbreaks among athletes or workers, only a few isolated infections, due to the control measures. Even if there were isolated leaks in China due to the Olympics, there's nothing that China can't handle at this point and I don't see why it would become an out of control outbreak.

Yellow book is commonly accepted internationally, and I would like to keep all my vaccine records in one place to monitor and have a record for my own use and my family doctor. It also eliminates having to print out hard copies from various providers in different format or searching for screen shots on my phone. I usually ask vaccine providers to sign the book and no one has any issues or raise any questions (both in China and US). Just had my Shingles vaccines at CVS before I left the US, and it is in my Yellow book and I can keep track when I need to do my second shot.

It is small in the same size of a passport to put into my passport pouch when I travel.

delete duplicate post

They seem to be selling them whilst no longer selling the SFO-PVG legs. I'd guess that they will fly them over for the cargo and then you'd be able to fly back in the pure unadulterated luxury of United Polaris.

More flight war.....

Biden administration is suspending basically ALL flights to the U.S. by Chinese carriers from now to March 31.

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-...-idUSL1N2U11UW

Let's see if China retaliates by suspending UA/AA/DL flights.

Yikes! :(

I mean, this news seems to be retaliatory action; from what I can tell. China had their reasons for suspension pretty clearly laid out:
"Don't fly a plane full of Covid-19 positive passengers to China, and you can continue to fly (at a reduced rate)."

As harsh and annoying as that strategy may be, I tend to agree here with "Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington," who "said Friday the policy for international passenger flights entering China has “been applied equally to Chinese and foreign airlines in a fair, open and transparent way.": 4 out of the nine flights that were recently suspended WERE Chinese carrier flights.

This appears as if the two opposing parties are of unequal intellect, and the USA being the unreasonable one here, IMO.

Well, China can claim any number of positive cases on a given flight, yet there is no verifiable way to see how many positive, or false positive cases. It looks like China is punishing the airlines since after all, it's the Chinese consulates that issue green codes to permit pax to fly. The process looks arbitrary, and not open or transparent, or fair.

From DOT point of view, the U.S. doesn't care China cancels flights by Chinese carriers. It's China's prerogative. But DOT is not happy that China suspends flights by US carriers in some arbitrary matter. You can't even verify their claim of positive cases....

US should require all PRC citizens to fly directly to the US from the PRC, suspend all visas issued to PRC citizens, and only recognize US visas issued after March 2020 (and revoke all visas issued after March 2020 that weren't issued for humanitarian reasons). And this should continue until the stupidity stops on the PRC side. Because reciprocity.

I suspect that may not offend the Chinese government much, if at all. They've been trying to minimize the number of international departures in addition to arrivals (e.g. deliberately slowing down passport issuance and renewal), under the assumption that each departure is a future arrival, and each arrival is an infection risk.

The Chinese government does care.

There are so many kids/relatives of PRC high ranking officials in the U.S.

They have bank accounts, luxury cars. real estates etc. in the U.S.

Remember, No.1 demand they made when meeting with US Secretary of State?

"Lifting U.S. visa restrictions on CCP members".

Cancel the visas of all CCP members and their families. If they're currently in the US, and they leave, they do not come back. Enrolled in school in the US? Too bad. Go complain to your mother or father and make them remove the idiotic restrictions on US citizens or the zero visa policy for CCP members and their families stays in place.

Your conspiracy theory doesn't make sense. If it's as you say, then the Chinese government would not limit return flights to such a degree. Unless you think the Chinese government wants all CCP officials to leave and never return. What a ridiculous theory.

Your hyperbole doesn't help your argument either. "No. 1 demand"... yeah right.

I think the government is under tremendous pressure to keep Omicron in check given how widespread it is overseas, esp given the coming Olympics. The number of positive cases are taxing the quarantine/isolation system. They're probably happy flights are suspended until 3/31

Schools in the USA rely on the money Chinese students bring in to fund many things that benefit American students and teachers at those schools.

Zero Covid is 100% political at this point but I don’t think cutting off your nose to spite your face is a good response for the USA.

Are you sure this is flights TO the US? The very first sentence of the article says otherwise. I’m going to be slightly concerned if flights out of China are getting banned.