China’s Spring Festival travel rush, the largest annual human migration worldwide, kicked off Saturday after the world’s most populous country reopened its borders amidst COVID-19 concerns.
Hundreds of millions of people will be seen swarming train stations, airports, and coach terminals across the country for family reunions on the Lunar New Year’s eve, which falls on Jan. 21.
According to an official press conference, the number of passenger trips during this year’s Spring Festival travel rush is expected to surge 99.5 percent from the same period last year to reach nearly 2.1 billion.
The Yangtze River Delta, one of China’s largest migrant-receiving regions, is poised to handle some 60 million railway passenger trips throughout the 40-day travel rush, rebounding to a three-year high and 80 percent of the 2019 level. In the southern economic powerhouse Guangdong, 25.4 million railway trips are estimated for the period.
Regional railway operators have decided to put extra trains into service to meet the robust demand, following a major shift in the country’s rules of COVID-19 response.
On Dec. 7, 2022, China adjusted its virus prevention and control policies with 10 new measures, shifting the policy focus from infection prevention to severe cases prevention.
In its latest move, the country announced it will downgrade the management of COVID-19 from Class A to Class B starting from Jan. 8 this year.
This shift it said is expected to make it much easier for people to travel and enter public venues, as passengers no longer need to present their health codes and negative nucleic acid test results or undergo temperature checks when entering railway stations and airports.
China is also making things easier for travel, for those returning from abroad — according to the adjusted rules, the country is to scrap restrictions on international passenger flights, increase the number of flights in stages and optimize the distribution of routes.
A recent guideline released by 13 state bodies, including the Ministry of Transport and China Meteorological Administration, stressed that measures must be in place to cope with extreme weather events during the travel rush, a period characterised by low temperatures and snowfalls. It urged public transport operators to ramp up precautions against icy roads, frosts, and strong winds, and adjust their schedules to meteorological changes in a timely manner.
The State Council, or China’s cabinet, said in a work plan for the travel rush, that local governments nationwide will launch an overhaul of all types of transport infrastructure, including urban transits, vessels, high-speed trains, and aircraft, to ward off safety risks.
Officials with regards to the COVID-19 containment during this mass seasonal migration said the State Council has taken steps to minimize the impact of the virus on every link of the Spring Festival transport, with priority given to the medical supplies for transport workers.
Further booster vaccination will be emphasised while public transport hubs and long-distance trains will be equipped with more emergency medicines, according to the State Council.
State agencies will also have public transport operators to increase backups for key personnel such as drivers and dispatchers, step up the cross-regional transfer of manpower, and rotate work schedules to brace for staff shortages caused by virus infection.
