China removed the asterisk mark in its travel code which was used to flag people who have been, or even just passed by a mid- or high-risk cities or areas in the past 14 days, so to facilitate domestic travel, Yicai reported citing a statement from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Wednesday. The search volume of air tickets on the online travel platform Qunar increased by 60% within 30 minutes following the new rule, while that of hotels doubled, and that of train tickets rose by up to 1.5 times, the newspaper said citing data by Qunar. However, residents in medium and high-risk areas still need to follow the travel restrictions and quarantine requirements unified nationwide, the newspaper said.