China announces nationwide loosening of Covid restrictions after protests

China has announced its biggest loosening of Covid restrictions to date after mass protests in which people called for Xi Jinping to resign.

People with less severe covid symptoms can now quarantine at home instead of at a centralized facility, frequent PCR tests will be reduced, and people will no longer have to show a health code on their phone to enter public spaces. .

It is the clearest sign to date that Xi Jinping has decided to abandon his strict zero-covid policy after it fueled widespread protests against his government.

China, the first to introduce Covid lockdowns to the world, has now labored under them longer than almost any other nation, crippling the economy and making life miserable for millions.

Xi had held up the policy as an example of China taking care of its people through top-down government control, as opposed to what he sees as a disorganized and dysfunctional West.

However, things came to a boil last week when nine people burned to death in a skyscraper amid suspicions they were trapped inside due to lockdowns, sparking protests that quickly turned into calls for greater freedoms in general.

To prevent them, the Chinese Communist Party has taken a sharp turn, bringing out scientists to report that Covid has mutated to become less deadly, so now is the right time to soften the rules.

The new rules eliminate forced quarantines for people without symptoms or with mild cases.

“Asymptomatic infected persons and mild cases who are eligible for home isolation are generally isolated at home, or may voluntarily choose centralized isolation for treatment,” the new rules read.

‘Massive PCR tests only carried out in schools, hospitals, nursing homes and high-risk work units; the scope and frequency of PCR tests are further reduced,” they added.

It comes after nationwide protests sparked by zero covid laws during which people called for greater personal freedoms and Xi Jinping’s resignation.

“People traveling across provinces do not need to provide a 48-hour test result and do not need to test upon arrival.”

China will also speed up vaccination of the elderly, the NHC said, long seen as a major stumbling block to easing Beijing’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid.

Late last month, rare demonstrations against the ruling Communist Party’s zero-Covid strategy broke out in China.

They expanded into calls for more political freedoms, with some even calling for the resignation of President Xi Jinping.

Authorities cracked down on subsequent efforts to protest while easing a number of restrictions, with some Chinese cities tentatively reversing mass testing and movement restrictions.

The capital Beijing, where many businesses have fully reopened, said this week that travelers were no longer required to show a negative virus test taken within 48 hours to use public transport.

Shanghai’s financial hub, which underwent a brutal two-month lockdown this year, announced the same rules, with residents allowed to enter outdoor venues such as parks and tourist attractions without a recent test.

And once dominated by pessimistic coverage of the dangers of the virus and scenes of pandemic chaos abroad, China’s tightly controlled media dramatically changed tune to support a tentative move away from zero-Covid.

Xi had personally endorsed the zero-covid policy and as recently as October promoted the officials responsible for blanket lockdowns, but now he seems to have changed course.

The predominant strain of Omicron “is nothing like the Delta variant from last year,” Guangzhou-based medicine professor Chong Yutian said in an article published by the Communist Party-run China Youth Daily.

“After infection with the Omicron variant, the vast majority will have no symptoms or symptoms will be mild, and very few will have severe symptoms, this is already widely known,” he assured readers.

But analysts at the Japanese firm Nomura estimated on Monday that 53 cities, home to nearly a third of China’s population, still had some restrictions in place.

Wednesday’s announcement came hours after the government released more data showing the crippling economic impacts of zero-Covid.

Imports and exports plummeted in November to levels not seen since early 2020.

Imports in November fell 10.6 percent on-year, the biggest drop since May 2020, according to the General Administration of Customs. Exports fell 8.7 percent during the same period.