Beijing’s sudden pivot away from containing Covid-19 has caused jitters around the world, with the United States saying it may restrict travel from China following its decision to end mandatory quarantine for overseas arrivals.

Chinese hospitals and funeral homes were under intense pressure on Wednesday as a surging Covid-19 wave drained resources, while the scale of the outbreak and doubts over official data prompted some countries to consider new travel rules on Chinese visitors..In an abrupt change of policy,

China will scrap quarantine measures for overseas arrivals starting January 8, health authorities announced yesterday, after nearly three years of strict pandemic border restrictions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday urged officials to take steps to protect lives in his first public remarks on Covid-19 since Beijing dramatically loosened hardline containment measures this month.

Seventy-one Chinese air force aircraft including fighter jets and drones entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone in the past 24 hours, the island’s government said yesterday, the largest reported incursion to date.

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged officials on Monday to take steps to protect lives in his first public remarks on Covid-19 since Beijing dramatically loosened hardline containment measures this month.

China’s Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily Covid-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said yesterday.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi has defended China’s stance on the war in Ukraine and suggested that it would deepen ties with Russia in the year ahead, as he hailed the “historic strides forward” in Chinese-Arab relations.

China's National Health Commission, which for the past three years or so has published daily Covid-19 case figures for the country, said it will no longer release such data from Sunday.

Half a million people in a single Chinese city are being infected with Covid-19 every day, a senior health official has said, in a rare and quickly censored acknowledgement that the country’s wave of infections is not being reflected in official statistics.

Hong Kong is aiming to reopen its border with China by mid-January, city leader John Lee announced on Saturday after returning from meetings in Beijing.

Shanghai authorities urged residents to stay at home this weekend, seeking a toned-down Christmas in the nation's most populous city as Covid-19 rages nationwide after tough curbs were lifted.

Two weeks after China abruptly lifted its long-held zero-Covid restrictions, the health authorities are scrambling to expand critical care capacity to deal with the surge in infections, which has already led to long lines at under-resourced hospitals.

China is expecting a peak in Covid-19 infections within a week, a health official said, with authorities predicting extra strain on the country’s health system even as they downplay the disease’s severity and continue to report no new deaths.

President Gabriel Boric of Chile, whose country has the largest Palestinian population outside of the Middle East, said Wednesday that he planned to open an embassy “in Palestine”.

A Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with Covid-19 as it expects half of the city’s 25 million people will get infected by the end of next week, while the virus sweeps through China largely unchecked.

The head of the World Health Organization said he was "very concerned" Wednesday about an unprecedented wave of Covid cases in China, urging Beijing to provide detailed information about the severity of the situation.

Dozens of hearses queued outside a Beijing crematorium on Wednesday, even as China reported no new COVID-19 deaths in its growing outbreak, sparking criticism of its virus accounting as the capital braces for a surge of cases.

China reported its first Covid-related deaths in weeks yesterday amid rising doubts over whether the official count was capturing the full toll of a disease that is ripping through cities after the government relaxed strict anti-virus controls.

Streets in major Chinese cities were eerily quiet yesterday as people stayed home to protect themselves from a surge in Covid-19 cases that has hit urban centres from north to south.