China announced this Wednesday a general relaxation of the sanitary rules that it had defended to contain the rise of COVID-19, abandoning its restrictive strategy that generated a historic wave of protests throughout the country.
The policy was relaxed today by the Council of State, which now allows those infected to isolate themselves in their homes instead of being confined in hospitals and isolation centers and which cancels constant PCR tests on the population.
The announcement means dismantling basic principles of the “zero covid” policy in force for almost three years and which allowed the virus to be contained at the beginning, although causing significant disturbances in the economy and demonstrations in recent days.
According to agencies such as afpthe relief of these measures comes shortly after the wave of demonstrations in various cities of the country where the protesters, mainly young people, showed their weariness with the strict health policy and some even called for the resignation of President Xi Jinping.
The latter, which made “covid zero” one of its flagship policies, has modified the discourse and has recognized that the less lethal omicron variant “opens the way to greater flexibility in restrictions.”
The new guidelines presented on Wednesday by the National Health Commission (CNS) indicate that, in general, “asymptomatic infected people and mild cases” of covid will be able to isolate themselves at home.
This represents a radical departure from the current norm that required any positive case to be transferred to a government facility for quarantine. Nor will it be necessary to show a green health code on the phone to access most buildings and public spaces, with the exception of “geriatrics, medical institutions, nurseries and educational centers”.
The country “will further reduce the scope and frequency of PCR tests” among the population that, until now, had to undergo these tests several times to be able to access public spaces. The use of confinements, applied in districts and sometimes in entire cities, will also be minimized, and the presentation of a PCR test of less than 48 hours will not be required to travel between provinces.
Finally, China will speed up vaccination of the elderly population, one of the main obstacles to relaxing the covid zero policy.
Immediately after the announcement of the new measures, the search for trips on the Ctrip app for the Chinese New Year period multiplied, reaching a record in three years, the state media reported. ThePaper.
With information from Efe, Afp and BBC.
