Just Do a Quarantine When You Get Back to Beijing, OK?

Editor's Note: Since this article was published, the rules governing who must undergo a quarantine have been changed. See here for the Mar 11 update.

A mere five days after the Beijing city government announced that foreigners returning from more than two weeks overseas do not need to self-quarantine, the world has gone and broke out with COVID-19 in a damn hurry.

Italy, Iran, South Korea, and Japan now have more infections than many provinces and major urban areas in China.

Hence today, a major adjustment was made to the foreigner exemption: Anyone who is flying in from or passing through an area where there is an active outbreak now in fact does need to quarantine.

However, officials stopped short of actually defining what an outbreak area is. Does it include South Korea (1,112 infections)? Italy (311)? Japan (147)? Nobody knows.

The Global Times, in their infinite wisdom, immediately tweeted this after the press conference: “It’s Law – All foreigners who fly into Beijing must go through a 14-day self-quarantine, according to Beijing municipal authority” ... which is not something that was stated at said press conference.

We did not hear the words “all” – what we heard was: anyone coming from severe outbreak areas would need to do a 14-day quarantine. Listen to the statement here (in Chinese) for yourself.

Given the actual administration of quarantine is falling on the thousands of individual property management companies and neighborhood committees that make up this massive city, enforcement has already been uneven and unlikely to be clarified by today's announcements. Messages from on high are not necessarily trickling down to each and every building and neighborhood in Beijing.

Anyhow, from our point of view, making any exceptions to the quarantine was a dumb idea to begin with. 

So we’ve got an easy decision rule for you, no matter where you are coming from and what passport you hold:

• Do a 14-day self-quarantine, even if no one tells you that you must.
• Are you an Italian flying in from Bali? Do a quarantine.
• Are you a PRC national flying in from California? Do a quarantine.
• Are you an American flying in from South Korea? Do a quarantine.
• Did your embassy tell you that you do not have to do a quarantine? Do a quarantine anyway.

Do none of the above scenarios fit your situation?

Use this handy fill-in-the-blank query:

Are you a [fill in your nationality here] flying in from [fill in your departure city here]? Do a quarantine.

It’s the sensible thing to do.

K? Get it? Good.

READ: Beijing Issues Ten Commandments of Safe Grocery Shopping

Image: utoszo.hu