With effect from the stroke of midnight on Friday (March 18), people intending to enter Macau via any boundary checkpoints with Zhuhai, Guangdong province, must hold a nucleic acid test certificate issued within 24 hours proving they are ‘negative’ for Covid-19 infection.
The announcement was made on Thursday by Macau’s Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre. It said the decision – agreed via the joint prevention and control mechanism between Zhuhai and Macau – took into consideration the pandemic-related situation in neighbouring places.
The Macau health authorities said they would keep in close contact with their counterparts in Zhuhai, in a bid to return to the 48-hour rule for Covid-19 test certificate for people coming to Macau from that mainland city.
The measure comes amid a rise in the number of local Covid-19 infections reported on the mainland. The Chinese authorities reported 1,226 new domestically transmitted Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, according to data from the National Health Commission.
The aggregate was down from 1,860 a day earlier, but it marked the fifth day of more than 1,000 such cases on the mainland.
In recent days, Macau has added to the list of places in mainland China where departing travellers will be subject to quarantine in Macau, including several locations in the neighbouring city of Zhuhai.
Any travellers inbound to Macau that had visited certain places on the mainland would have to do quarantine at a “designated venue” for a minimum of seven days counting from their date of departure from the relevant areas, up to a maximum of 14 days.
