China no longer marks cities with COVID infections in travel tracking system. (Photo: Xinhua)

China no longer marks cities with COVID infections in travel tracking system, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced on Wednesday.

"This move aims to balance epidemic control and socioeconomic development and facilitate traveling," the ministry said in a statement.

The previous measure was to put an asterisk mark in cities and areas announced in mid- or high-risks on travelers' digital travel history in the past 14 days which was often used as proof for local authorities to impose curbs or quarantines to the visitors.

On Tuesday, China released a new updated guideline against the virus, slashing the quarantine time for inbound travels to seven days centralized quarantine plus three days of home monitoring, down from previous 21 days in total.

The new guideline also made clear standards to define mid- or high-risk area and how often to conduct nucleic acid tests on different groups of people.