Quarantine insurance revived amidst rising COVID-19 cases in China

Financial pressure mounts following a recent surge in cases.

Chinese insurers are ‘reviving’ their COVID-19 insurance products as the country continues to battle rising COVID-19 cases, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.

The report said that some insurers like the Public Mutual Insurance Corp and Hong Kong-listed ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance have reintroduced new versions of their insurance policy that were designed to compensate for wages lost due to government-mandated quarantines. The policies provide payouts based on the number of days the insured spent in quarantine.

Old versions of these policies were previously pulled out by the two companies following increasing demand from customers growing anxious from the outbreak of the Omicron variant. These policies were bought by consumers in order to seek ways to mitigate losses caused by China’s strict quarantine requirements which would sometimes require people to stay in state-owned facilities for over a month.

Coverage costs remain low due to Chinese insurers engaging in a price war however coverage periods were greatly slashed from the previous year to three months. The number of days insured customers can claim was also cut down to 14 days from the previous 60 days.

Recently, the country’s global financial hub, Shanghai, logged five days straight of record COVID-19 cases.

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