China issues Covid diktat for visitors from Russia; mandates pre-flight nucleic acid test

China on Monday announced that any passengers boarding the China Airlines flights from Moscow to Beijing will be required to provide negative nucleic acid testing results within 120 hours before boarding. This would be put into effect from May 8, as per a statement released by the Chinese embassy in Moscow. Russia reported more than 10,000 new cases of coronavirus infections on Sunday with more than half of the 10,633 new cases in Moscow. The total number of cases in Russia has crossed 134,000 overall with 1,420 deaths.

China has also extended caution to all flights arriving to Beijing and other major cities in the country. "All inbound passengers arriving in Beijing are required to receive nucleic acid tests and undergo centralized quarantine. After the centralized quarantine, the passengers will be quarantined for further 7 days at home and need to have one contact person for health monitoring," read the instructions on China Airlines's official site. 

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China which has slowly begun to revive its economy and lift its lockdown has been witnessing a massive spike in domestic travel. Between the period of May 1 to May 3, China recorded nearly 85 million domestic tourist trips with the tourism revenue reaching 35.06 billion yuan (4.97 billion U.S. dollars), as per the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The country has recorded  82,877 cases to date while over 4,630 people have succumbed to the deadly virus. 

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