Limited Work by the Certification Authorities Due to the Corona Virus

11. February 2020

Due to the spread of the corona virus in China the Chinese government has extended the national Spring Festival holiday. The certification authorities along with most other relevant offices are closed, working from home or with limited staffing. With this official announcement both the government and the certification authorities CNCA and CQC have now pointed out that there will be restrictions on the implementation of certifications to be expected in the coming weeks.

We have summarized the most important information from these announcements for you below:

The CNCA gives all subordinate certification bodies the opportunity to select suitable methods in order to continue to guarantee that the plants are audited. If factory inspections will be postponed due to the corona virus, then the certification bodies must inform the factories and draw up a suitable action plan so that the postponed audit can be carried out later.

The test laboratories in China must organize themselves accordingly to ensure that the tests in China will run normally.

The CQC is currently not conducting factory inspections outside of China. It may be possible to commission a foreign institution to do the audit via the CQC.

For all plants that have recently received non-conformities during their audits, the deadline to correct this is extended to 3 months after the epidemic has ended. If non-conformities result from errors in the application documents, the corrected documents must still be submitted to CQC within the previously allotted time.

For plants that urgently need an audit, since otherwise the validity of the certification may expire, the validity of the certification is extended to 3 months after the end of the epidemic.

For certificates from companies whose production has been discontinued due to the epidemic and which therefore cannot carry out factory inspections, the deadline for suspending the certificate by the certification body can also be postponed to three months after the end of the epidemic.

When the epidemic can be seen as ended is yet to determine by the Chinese government.

We will continue to keep you up to date on all new announcements and effects on certification processes.

For more information on how CCC certification, the CCC Self-Declaration and voluntary CCAP or CQC certification may affect your company, or for more information about CCC certification in general, the process, and the associated costs, please visit our website and our News Section where you will find current updates twice a week.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for further details and consultation. You can contact us via e-mail, or call us (UK: +44 2071931135, Rest of Europe: +49 69 2713769150, US: +1 773 654-2673).

You can also check out our free CCC-Brochure, which can be downloaded right here as a PDF file or you consult our book (in English) “A Brief Guide to CCC: China Compulsory Certification”, which can be found directly hier on Amazon.

Here you can download our brochure about the CCC Self-Declaration.

Here you can download our brochure about the voluntary CCAP or CQC certification.