Several Chinese cities announced easing of coronavirus-related restrictions on Sunday.
Several Chinese cities, including Urumqi in the country’s far west, on Sunday announced easing of coronavirus restrictions, following the example of other cities this week, as China struggles to adjust its “zero COVID” policy following violent protests. Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, will reopen shopping malls, markets, restaurants and other venues from Monday, authorities said, ending months of strict lockdowns.
Residents in the city of Zhengzhou, home of the world’s largest iPhone factory that was rocked by violent protests last month, will no longer need to show drug test results to use public transportation, taxis or even “public areas,” authorities said Sunday. These tests will also no longer be necessary to use public transport in Shanghai, the economic capital, in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province, or in Wuhan, where the 2019 pandemic began.
These cities are following the example of Changdu and Tianjin or Shenzhen in the south of the country. Authorities in the Haizhu district of the city of Guangzhou, where clashes erupted last month, said it was no longer necessary for people without symptoms to be tested unless they belong to certain special groups, such as B. Front line workers.
Beijing authorities said on Saturday that buying medicines for fever, cough and sore throat no longer requires registration.
A breathless policy
Proud of President Xi Jinping, the “zero Covid” policy has reached its limits amid a sharp economic slowdown and popular impatience while the rest of the world has more or less adjusted to living with the virus. It is at the origin of a wave of demonstrations, unprecedented since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 and perhaps even since the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing, that have been crushed with blood.
For the time being, the easing measures vary from region to region. However, the communist regime is expected to announce changes to nationwide testing, allowing positive cases and close contacts to self-isolate at home under certain conditions, the filing said. Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chunlan, who is overseeing efforts to combat COVID-19, said last week that the virus was less pathogenic, a shift in tone to be more consistent with what many health officials are saying for a year around the world.
Some residents have denounced inconsistencies in the easing of restrictions, including requiring some locations to present a negative COVID test while mass testing centers are closed. In Beijing and Wuhan, this has led to long queues outside the few remaining test centers. Authorities said the number of daily new cases nationwide fell to 31,824, a drop that could be explained by the reduction in the number of tests. Authorities also reported two new deaths from COVID-19.
The end of “zero Covid”?
Despite the easing of restrictions, many experts believe China is unlikely to begin a meaningful reopening before March given the need to step up vaccinations, particularly among the elderly population. “Although there have been many local changes in COVID policy recently, we do not interpret them as China’s abandonment of ‘COVID zero’ policy,” Goldman Sachs said in a note Sunday. “Rather, we see them as clear evidence that the Chinese government is preparing for an exit and is trying to minimize the economic and social costs of its anti-COVID measures in the meantime. Preparations may take a few months and will likely face challenges.” give along the way,” added the investment bank.
Authorities recently announced that they would speed up immunizations for the elderly, but many remain reluctant to get vaccinated. “Some people have doubts about the safety and effectiveness of the new national coronavirus vaccine,” said an article in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, on Sunday. “Experts say this perception is wrong,” the article said, adding that domestically made vaccines are safe. Foreign vaccines are not allowed in China and Xi Jinping is not ready to reverse the policy, US intelligence director April Haines said on Saturday.