Within 48 hours. Those are there words which have this Chinese New Year become a curse to anyone wishing to return home to their family or go on a plain-old holiday. Just as well Nanjing’s airport has rolled out its own nucleic acid testing service…
As China’s 2022 pilgrimage home began, so with it came concerns over the Omicron variant of COVID, prompting the bulk of China’s regions and cities to demand visitors to be able to produce a negative nucleic acid test (NAT), taken less than 48 hours prior, upon arrival.
Announced by Lukou on their official WeChat on 30 January, the NAT service is being provided to Lukou by Nanjing Tongren Hospital, located conveniently for them, not too far from the airport.
Just as with those conducted elsewhere, the results of a test conducted at the Lukou site are available to the testee 4-6 hours later.
But is the test going to be of any practical use? After all, you don’t want to be left stranded in your destination airport because your test result is AWOL.
So let’s for example assume you’re going to Sanya, because that’s a fairly safe assumption to make.
The flight from Nanjing to Sanya generally takes between 3 and 3 and a half hours. And you’ll need to check in for your flight at least 2 hours in advance.
So if you arrive at Lukou at least half an hour early in order to do the test, a full 6 hours will have passed since the test when you arrive in Sanya. Result!
But depending where you are going, that result may not even be checked at the airport.
Chris Georgiou, who works in Nanjing for MadeinChina.com and is holidaying in Lijiang in Yunnan Province at the moment, spoke with The Nanjinger this morning. “When I arrived at the airport in Lijiang, they just asked for the Yunnan health code and the other code which shows which cities you’ve been to. The same when I arrived in the hotel, which also required to see the test”.
The NAT service booth at Lukou is located outside the airport on the ground floor between T2 and the Pullman Nanjing Lukou Airport hotel. If coming to the airport by metro, take the lift to 1F and it’s right outside.
Foreign passport holders should confirm with the testing staff as to how they will receive their test result. In The Nanjinger’s experience, they were happy to send a PDF of the result by WeChat.
During the trial operation of the service, the booth is open from 09:00 to 22:00 every day. A test costs the same as it does at any other public NAT service provider in Nanjing; ¥40.
So while it’s undeniably great news that the testing service is now available at the airport, questions remain. Just how long is the queue for testing going to be? Will I miss my flight as a result? And why on Earth was this service not rolled out earlier?
