CHINA / SOCIETY By GT staff reporters Published: Jan 27, 2021 10:54 PM
China s 40-day Spring Festival travel rush has kicked off on Thursday. Beijing West Railway Station expects the holiday travel rush to peak between February 16-18, and an estimated 70,000 passengers on average arriving at the station a day. Photo: Li Hao/GT
Dubbed the world s largest human migration, this year s Spring Festival travel rush, estimated at around 1.152 billion trips, is 60 percent decline than that of 2019.
Photo: Chen Xia/GT
To make this unusual Spring Festival as happy, safe and wonderful as usual, officials from six central government departments announced at a press conference on Wednesday a slew of considerate and warm measures. The aim is to guarantee people who choose not to return to hometown could fully enjoy the holiday with their families, meanwhile, those who return would not be affected by rigid epidemic-control measures.
Holidays challenge villages epidemic controls
Xu Keyue Published: Jan 21, 2021 09:13 PM
Villagers queue up to receive nucleic acid testing at a designated site in Chaoyang district, Beijing on January 14. Photo: VCG
Chinese health authorities released on Wednesday an extra strict guideline especially for people returning to their hometowns in rural areas during the upcoming Spring Festival holidays, stipulating tough measures including a 14-day health monitoring period at home after arrivals. Many wonder, however, if such moves will fix existing local loopholes.
Many observers speculated that the highly complex and strict procedure listed in the guideline itself could dissuade a large part of those from returning to the rural areas in the first place. However, grave challenges would likely remain in local systems, as problems such as weaker nucleic acid testing capabilities and overreacting in terms of management are unlikely to be reversed soon, the Global Times learned.