The changes include shortening quarantine periods by two days for close contacts of infected people and for travelers arriving in the country, as well as removing a rule penalizing airlines for bringing in too many cases. The move came a day after President Xi Jinping and the country’s top decision-makers on the Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee heard a work report on Covid measures. The announcement of the National Health Commission emphasizes that the country “will not retreat from the dynamic policy of zeroing out of Covid” and that changes were made only to “strengthen” the measures against the pandemic. “The situation is still serious and complicated. We must maintain strategic focus and … take more decisive and decisive action to contain the spread of the pandemic and focus on the war of attrition in key areas,” the Commission said. At a regular press briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters: “This certainly does not mean that we can relax our response or even simply end the Covid restrictions and ‘extend.’ China has refined and adapted its containment measures in response to how the virus is mutating.” The news was greeted cautiously by many Chinese, who have grown increasingly unhappy with nearly three years of Covid-19 lockdowns hitting the world’s second-largest economy. “Excessive measures are hated more than us ordinary people. I hope the officials will honestly follow the rules,” said one user on the social media platform Weibo. Under the new measures, central quarantine times for close contacts and travelers from abroad have been reduced from seven to five days. The requirement for three more days of home isolation after central quarantine remains. China will also stop trying to trace “secondary” contacts – a major inconvenience for city dwellers involved in sweeping contact tracing efforts when a case is detected – while still tracing close contacts. The commission said it would also develop a plan to speed up vaccinations, which experts say is critical before the country can begin to fully scale back a zero-Covid policy that has made China a global outlier. An outbreak control worker wears protective clothing as people line up at a Covid testing chamber in Beijing. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images Among the new measures is adjusting the categorization of Covid risk areas into ‘high’ and ‘low’ – eliminating a ‘medium’ category in a bid to minimize the number of people involved in control measures. The new steps include ending a “circuit breaker”, under which airlines faced flight suspension if they brought too many passengers infected with Covid, a system that caused frequent cancellations. However, international flights remain at a small fraction of pre-Covid levels. The easing comes even as China’s case numbers have risen to their highest level since April, with record tallies in Beijing and the central city of Zhengzhou. Many cities have expanded local lockdowns and other measures, including the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The country reported 10,729 new cases and more than 5 million people were confined to their homes in the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou and the western megacity of Chongqing. Beijing, where most of its 21 million people are being tested almost daily, has closed parks and imposed other restrictions. Many schools in the city switched to online classes, hospitals reduced services and some shops and restaurants closed, with their staff quarantined. Videos on social media showed people in some areas protesting or fighting with police and health workers. Chen Daoyin, a former associate professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said people should not be overly optimistic as the “fundamental tone” of the Chinese government has not changed. “From the way they emphasize that one cannot relax and ‘lay flat’, we can see that this is a minor adjustment, not a fundamental change. The government does not believe that the conditions exist for a complete relaxation.” “From a pessimistic perspective, as long as the virus continues to mutate … I can’t see the government changing its basic policy,” he said. Additional reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press
