“I was asked when our lives can return to where we were in 2019. In his interview, Zhong optimistically appeared to suggest a return to pre-pandemic life in China within months. The postgraduate admissions test requires the expected 5 million participants to travel across the country and gather in large groups. Online there was concern among students who are supposed to sit for a major exam in late December. “It is highly unlikely that people will be restricted from travelling home for lunar new year celebrations in 2023, but it is still important to step up preparations,” he said, according to state media. There were also widespread reports of shortages of medication and rapid tests in pharmacies and online.Īhead of January’s lunar new year – the country’s busiest travel period – Zhong urged people to get booster shots. With low vaccination rates among the vulnerable elderly demographics, the rapid change of rules has caused some fear and alarm among the population. Nationally it has just one intensive care bed per 10,000 residents, far below other nations in the region. The government has faced criticism for not using the zero-Covid period to build its capacity. China’s health system is concentrated in major cities and along the wealthier east coast. Zhong Nanshan said the Omicron variant was “spreading rapidly”, and that one person could infect 22 others.Īuthorities are preparing for almost 300,000 doctors and nurses to beredeployed to intensive care units across the country.
On Sunday China’s top disease expert warned of a coming surge in cases. Videos showed long queues in Shanghai at the few remaining testing sites left open for people working in vulnerable sectors. However, since mandatory testing was drastically scaled back and test stations dismantled, the official case numbers are no longer considered a reliable measurement. Sunday’s tally of 8,626 was down from 10,597 new cases the previous day. In recent weeks, local cases have been trending lower since a late November peak of 40,052, official figures show. “The number of fever clinic visits and flu-like cases increased significantly, and the number of … emergency calls increased sharply.” “The current trend of the rapid spread of the epidemic in Beijing still exists,” Li Ang, a spokesperson for the city’s health commission, said at a briefing on Monday. Over the past week testing requirements have been greatly reduced, domestic travel restrictions lifted, and infected people allowed to quarantine at home instead of being sent to specialised facilities.īeijing authorities said fever clinics at hospitals in the city had received more than 22,000 patients on Sunday, 16 times the number a week ago. The app is the latest tenet of China’s zero-Covid policy to be dismantled. “I hope there will be mechanisms and measures to log out and delete this,” said one.
Some expressed concern about the vast amounts of personal data collected by the app and others like it. “The past few years we have witnessed ‘history’ one time after another, and I hope that there will never be a day when it will be used again,” wrote another. “Goodbye itinerary card, concerts here I come,” wrote one person. Online, residents shared screenshots of their final logins and farewelled the app. A plethora of local and provincial apps used health data which often could not be shared with other regions. The national app was a central pillar of the technological infrastructure that guided the government’s Covid response.
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