Tourists line up to enter Luhuitou scenic area in Sanya, South China's Hainan Province on August 3. Photo: VCG

South China's Hainan Province announced it will resume cross-provincial group tours organized by travel agencies as well as other entertainment activities across the province from Thursday after the entire province's risk level for COVID-19 was lowered to low-risk on Thursday morning. 

According to Hainan Fabu, the local government's official Weibo account, the entire province became a low-risk area from 10 am on Thursday. 

The Hainan Provincial Department of Culture, Radio, Film, Television, Publication and Sports, issued the latest notice which says that travel agencies and online travel companies can resume their business of interprovincial group tours and booking services of flight tickets and hotels. 

However, these agencies and companies cannot organize tour groups heading for medium- or high-risk areas, nor can they accept tour groups coming from medium- or high-risk areas. 

According to an employee surnamed Huang from the Sanya branch of Hainan China Travel Service Co, the company received the notice saying that operations will restart and the business will gradually resume next week. 

A COVID-19 infection was confirmed in Haikou, the capital of Hainan, on August 5 when China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism ordered to suspended cross-provincial travel in 10 provinces including Hainan and Hunan provinces and Beijing and Shanghai municipalities to combat the Delta outbreak across the country since late July. 

"My company's business was severely affected after the confirmed case was reported in the province, but business was doing relatively well before the incident," Huang told the Global Times on Thursday, adding that it is hard to estimate at present how the epidemic will affect her company's revenue this year. 

Besides travel, all kinds of cultural and entertainment activities across the province also resumed. 

The local epidemic prevention and control measures have also been adjusted accordingly.

Those who enter or return to Hainan from epidemic-hit areas within 14 days must have two negative nucleic acid test results taken with 24 hours in between each test. People departing from the province are not required to show their negative results obtained within 48 hours except for those heading for Beijing. 

Besides, activities involving 300 people are also allowed to resume with normalized prevention and control emphasized.