After several cities relaxed some of the restrictions in the last few hours, and the protests registered in recent days, the Chinese authorities declared that “the conditions exist for the country to adjust its anti-pandemic measures.”
Source: Efe
Vice Prime Minister Sun Chunlan, in charge of supervising the “zero covid” policy, assured this Thursday that the low pathogenicity of the virus and the high vaccination rate of more than 90% of the population, among other factors, have “created the conditions” for the country to “adjust the measures against the pandemic.”
On Wednesday, the official held a meeting with experts from the Commission in which she “listened to their suggestions on how to improve containment measures” and assured that the country is in a “new situation.”
Sun’s words are the official finishing touch to a feeling of imminent change that is perceived in the population of the Asian country.
SOME CITIES RECOVER SOME NORMALITY
The southern megacities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen announced in recent hours the withdrawal of various anti-pandemic restrictions and some of their districts will also allow certain close contacts of those infected considered vulnerable to confine themselves at home, which represents a considerable shift from current policy. during these years.
The guideline, to which China has been clinging for more than two years, consists of the isolation of all those infected, strict border controls, partial or total confinement in places where cases are detected and constant PCR tests on the urban population.
Isolation is one of the most controversial points given that cities have to sometimes resort to temporary and prefabricated facilities with poor sanitation and problems with access to medical care.
Canton, which registered protests in the last week against the restrictions, has been dealing for weeks with a regrowth that is producing thousands of new cases daily, figures that in the past would have inevitably led to a general confinement like the one suffered by the cities of Wuhan (central ), Shanghai (east) or Xian (center), among others.
Despite the more than 5,000 infections registered yesterday in the city, Canton residents assured Efe that some shopping centers in the city and other establishments have stopped asking customers to show their negative PCR tests carried out in the previous 48 hours, although they must testify through a monitoring application that they have not passed through an area considered to be at risk.
PCR tests carried out in the previous 72 hours or less are necessary in Chinese cities to access places such as supermarkets, parks or stores, giving rise to long lines at the sampling booths that have created discontent in the population.
CHANGE OF TONE IN OFFICIAL MEDIA
In recent days, official media have published articles downplaying the severity of the omicron variant or the long-term effects of the coronavirus, in contrast to the monitoring that these more than two years have made of the havoc caused by the virus in the rest of the world while China maintained minimal levels of infections.
The People’s Daily, a newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, assured this Thursday that there is no evidence to demonstrate the existence of the so-called “persistent covid” and assured that it is “improbable” that patients recovered from covid spread the virus.
Some commentators have even turned to the broadcast of the World Cup in Qatar on Chinese state television in search of clues.
In the first days of the competition, the stadium stands full of people without masks became a viral topic on Chinese networks, where users wondered if they lived “in a parallel universe.”
After the first days, CCTV television decided not to broadcast any more short shots of the fans, replacing them with long shots of the stadium or the coaches, which caused outrage among the spectators: “Do they think we are stupid?” snapped one of them. them on Weibo.
However, in the last decisive matches of the group stage, the channel again broadcast images of the fans, without an explanation having been provided either for their withdrawal or for their return.
CONFUSION IN BEIJING
There has been a large-scale closure of sampling booths for PCR tests in the Chinese capital, which is facing the largest-scale outbreak of covid in its history and against which it has decreed numerous closures.
However, unlike in the aforementioned Canton, Beijing public places continue to require the sample of a negative PCR test carried out within 48 hours prior to entry.
Thus, residents of Beijing continue to be forced to carry out PCR tests to enter their office, take public transport or eat in a restaurant, but now they face long lines due to the reduction in the number of testing points: “Don’t you see It’s winter and we have to queue for an hour? Withdraw the PCR requirements”, asked a netizen.
According to official figures, since the beginning of the pandemic, 5,233 people have died in China, where some studies maintain that ‘zero covid’ has saved millions of lives.
