Beijing Will Quarantine All Overseas Arrivals From Midnight

(Bloomberg) -- Beijing will quarantine all travelers from overseas, including Chinese citizens, at designated locations for 14 days as the government shifts its focus to limiting imported coronavirus cases.

From midnight on Monday, all new arrivals will be kept under observation for two weeks, Beijing’s municipal government said in a statement late Sunday afternoon. That means even those who live in the city will not be allowed to return home except under “special circumstances,” it said. They will also have to cover the cost of their quarantines.

The new measures are the most extreme undertaken by any major international hub so far to stop travelers from bringing the deadly pathogen into their cities. Many countries have put restrictions on travelers from places with high numbers of infections including China and Italy, while New Zealand has said that almost every individual who enters the country must self-isolate for 14 days.

Beijing hasn’t reported any locally-transmitted cases of the virus for more than a week. All of the city’s 16 newly confirmed infections from March 7 to March 14 were travelers from countries including the U.S., Italy and Spain.

The local government also warned in its statement that it would investigate anyone caught lying about their symptoms. At least 12 people infected with the virus entering China from overseas have been put under investigation for concealing their illness or travel history, Hu Xijin, the editor of the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper, tweeted on Sunday.

The mandatory quarantines and costs to travelers are “helpful measures that could encourage overseas Chinese to think carefully about coming back to China,” Hu said in a post on Weibo. He also urged other places in China to take similar measures against travelers from Europe, the U.S., Australia, South Korea, Japan and the Middle East.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Huang Zhe in Beijing at zhuang37@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kyung Bok Cho at kcho7@bloomberg.net, Sharon Chen, James Mayger

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With assistance from Bloomberg