China cuts heavy-handed Covid rules
SEVERAL Chinese cities began cutting routine community Covid-19 testing yesterday, days after China announced an easing of some of its heavy-handed coronavirus measures, sparking worry in some communities as nationwide cases continued to rise.
In the northern city of Shijiazhuang, some families expressed concern about exposing their children to the virus at school, giving excuses such as toothaches or earaches for their children’s absence, according to social media posts following a state media report that testing in the city would end.
Other cities, including Yanji in the northeast and Hefei in the east, also said they will stop routine community Covid-19 testing, according to official notices, halting a practice that has become a major fiscal burden for communities across China.
On Friday, the National Health Commission updated its Covid-19 rules in the most significant easing of curbs yet, describing the changes as an “optimisation” of its measures to soften the impact on people’s lives, even as China sticks to its zero-covid-19 policy nearly three years into the pandemic.
The move, which cut quarantine times for close contacts of cases and inbound travellers by two days, to eight days total, was applauded by investors, even though many experts don’t expect China to begin significant easing until March or April at the earliest.
The changes come even as several major cities including Beijing logged record infections on Monday, posing a challenge for authorities scrambling to
quell outbreaks quickly while trying to minimise the impact on people’s lives and the economy.
Some areas of Beijing are requiring daily tests.
The concern and confusion in Shijiazhuang was a top-five trending topic on the Twitter-like Weibo.
The city’s Communist Party chief, Zhang Chaochao, said its “optimisation” of prevention measures should not be seen as authorities “lying flat” - an expression for inaction – nor is Shijiazhuang moving towards “full liberation” from Covid-19 curbs.
The city, about 295km southwest of Beijing, reported 544 infections for Sunday, only three of which it categorised as symptomatic.
“I’m a little scared. In the future, public places will not look at nucleic acid tests, and nucleic acid test points will also be closed, everyone needs
to pay for the tests,” one Weibo user wrote, referring to Shijiazhuang. Gavekal Research said yesterday it was “curious timing” for China to relax its Covid-19 policies.
“The combination of an intensifying outbreak and loosening central requirements has led to debate over whether China is now gradually moving to a de facto policy of tolerating Covid,” it said.
Nationwide, 16 072 new locally transmitted cases were reported by the National Health Commission, up from 14 761 on Sunday and the most in China since April 25, when Shanghai was battling an outbreak that locked down the city for two months.
Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Zhengzhou all recorded their worst days so far, though in the capital city the tally was a few hundred cases.