The Macau SAR government says it will not implement any quarantine restrictions on arrivals from Guangzhou city, the capital city of Guangdong Province, despite a new case of locally transmitted COVID-19 being reported last week.
Huadu district in Guangzhou city had reported a COVID-19 local case last Thursday – a 40-year-old patient who worked at a designated quarantine hotel for international arrivals. He was confirmed to have been infected by imported cases from the hotel. The patient has been quarantined and received treatment in hospital.
The Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission then conducted a mass virus test on over 150,000 residents around the district by Sunday and no more cases were found.
Rumors subsequently began circulating that Macau would impose a two-week quarantine on visitors who had been to Guangzhou in the past 14 days, but the government clarified on Monday that this is not the case.
“The case in Guangzhou had an obvious infection source, and it is confirmed that the patient is infected by imported cases,” officials said. “Therefore, we do not impose any special measures towards Guangzhou.”
Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) applications resumed for all of mainland China from 23 September, but there remain concerns that any outbreak in mainland cities might disrupt the already slow recovery of visitor numbers to Macau.
From 13 October, Macau imposed quarantine restrictions on anyone who has been to Qingdao in Shandong Province within the past two weeks following a mini-outbreak of COVID-19 within the Qingdao community.
