China continues to employ a “zero Covid policy” which means that cities and towns all over China could be shutdown at any time. If you are a tourist in China, this does not exempt you either, as 80,000 tourists found out this weekend.
80,000 Tourists Locked Down in China
In the city of Sanya, located on the Hainan Island of China, 263 positive Covid cases caused a city-wide lockdown. This lockdown has stranded 80,000 tourists in a place that is very popular for surfing. And, this is peak tourist time for this area.
With this lockdown, the only things that continue to operate are the supermarkets and pharmacies. The government said that any tourists who had their flights canceled would could book hotel rooms at a 50% discount, meaning that those tourists are going to have to pay extra to stay during this lockdown – they do not get the extended time for free.
All flights and trains have been canceled and for tourists to be able to leave the area, they must have 5 negative PCR tests in 7 days. This will certainly cause some concern for many as one positive means that they won’t be able to leave for longer than that week as more testing is done.
For now, it appears that these tourists, and all the locals, are locked down for a least these 7 days as they test to see if they are able to leave the area. Given that this all happened on the weekend, it is certain that this causing a huge disruption for many tourists who likely were going to head back home on Sunday to get back to work.
With the continuation of the “zero Covid policy”, will tourists still go to China during this? Shanghai just came out of their 65 day strict lockdown in June – a lockdown that affected over 25 million people that live there.
