Singapore, Bangladesh, Egypt, Russia and Thailand exported covid cases to PRC

Report by : Gan Yung Chyan

                 / KUCINTA SETIA

According to the Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission, at 12 am of 24 July 2020, Guangzhou has reported 5 newly imported confirmed cases and 5 new asymptomatic infections. Six of them came from the CZ3040 Singapore-Guangzhou flight on 23 July.

According to the International Flight Circuit Breaker Regulations of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), if the number of passengers with a positive nucleic acid test result on the same route of an airline reaches 5 after entry, the company’s route operation will be suspended for 1 week. However; if it reaches 10, the company’s route operation will be suspended for a month. The "fuse" flight volume cannot be adjusted for other routes. After the "fuse" period is over, the airline can resume the weekly flight schedule.

Accordingly, China Southern Airlines Singapore-Guangzhou CZ3040 flight will be suspended for one week.

Prior to this flight, CAAC has issued 5 fusing instructions to the following routes:-

14 June 2020 - First fusing instruction to China Southern for bringing in 17 passengers diagnosed with covid on 11 June on the Dhaka - Guangzhou route (flight CZ392).

1 July 2020 - Second fusing instruction, issued to Sichuan Airlines for importing six covid cases from Cairo on the route to Chengdu (flight 3U8392) on 27 June.

6 July 2020 - Third fusing instruction, issued to US-Bangla Airlines for bringing in five covid cases from Dhaka to Guangzhou on 28 June under flight BS325.

10 July 2020 - Fourth fusing instruction, issued to Air China on the flight CA910 from Moscow (via Shenyang) on 4 July 2020. More than five passengers were diagnosed with covid.

15 July 2020 - Fifth fusing instruction, issued to Thai Lion Air for the 7 July Guangzhou flight SL117 involving six passengers from Don Mueang diagnosed with covid in Guangzhou and to Thai AirAsia X (flight XJ808) for importing five covid cases into Tianjin from Don Mueang, Bangkok.

The above flight services were suspended for a week after.

At press time, the local mainstream media in Singapore, Bangladesh, Egypt, Russia and Thailand did not report on the exported covid cases to the Chinese cities.

Foreign countries have been suspected by the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China for under-detecting covid cases and thus it is required that passengers entering PRC must produce nucleic acid certificates proving that they are not suffering from covid before entry.