China moves towards the end of Covid zero: home quarantines and the end of mass lockdowns

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After three years locked in the Covid zero prison, China is taking bigger and bigger steps towards an early reopening, freeing the population from the yoke of many of the toughest restrictions that seemed immovable until now.

If at the beginning of November Beijing began to slowly turn some chips that pointed to relaxation, the protests against the eternal policies of mass confinement have brought forward the burial of some important control measures.

This Wednesday, after a meeting of the Politburo of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the State Council has outlined the new instructions that are aimed towards a horizon in which the Asian giant will finally learn to live with the virus just when the country is dealing with its biggest wave of infections

Quarantines at home

The massive centralized quarantines are over.

End of what was probably the most unpopular policy because it dragged citizens, sometimes by force, out of their homes and

, even minors from their parents' embrace.

Now, those who test positive for Covid and are asymptomatic, or have mild symptoms, can isolate themselves at home for seven days

one of the many mega centers that have been set up throughout the country.

The same guideline falls on the closest contacts of the positives, who will be able to self-isolate at home for five days instead of the previous requirement of spending eight days in isolation, first at a central facility and then at home.

End of mass lockdowns

In recent years, we have seen how

with millions of inhabitants were closed in the Asian country due to a handful of cases.

Entire neighborhoods have been locked down because a neighbor had been a close contact of a positive.

And many people were locked up at home, sealing their doors with fences, because they had passed through a shopping center where an infected person had been the day before.

Those extremes are over.

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In the designated high-risk areas, an entire floor or only the house where the positive case is concentrated may be blocked.

Now it remains to be seen if the skittish neighborhood committees follow the new instructions.

Throughout the pandemic, these committees, made up of volunteers and low-level local officials, concentrated even more power than the police, arbitrarily deciding to lock down entire neighborhoods if any contagion had been reported nearby.

The new policy approved on Wednesday also emphasized that

after several episodes of suicides have been reported under the lockdowns or people who died during the lockdowns without being able to be treated in time.

More antigens and less PCR

PCR test booths have become a fixture in China's urban landscape.

They are everywhere.

In cities like Beijing or Shanghai, by order of the health authorities, these mass testing posts

In large cities, you had to open your mouth every 48 to 72 hours for a visored official decked out in a hazmat suit to rub the swab down your throat.

Little by little, some of these cabins are disappearing and will be concentrated above all in high-risk areas, that is, where cases are reported.

Instead,

hitherto reviled in China because authorities mistrusted the resulting false negatives and because test results could not be equally recorded in the centralized sampling system, will be expanded.

with which the PCR screening is done.

Mobile codes

A couple of months after the first outbreak broke out in the city of Wuhan, the health authorities decided to classify citizens by colour:

It was a pioneering application that provided the user with a QR code divided into these three levels and integrated into WeChat (Chinese WhatsApp) and Alipay, Alibaba's payment app.

In all this time, in virtually all public places in China it has been mandatory to scan the code, which sends a notification to a tracking database, which monitors the user.

In the event that, for example, a positive case had been reported in the restaurant where he dined last night, the authorities immediately received the data of all the customers who shared a space with the infected person thanks to the QR information.

Then, the code of their mobiles would become red and that would lead them to a long quarantine.

Probably all the residents of the neighborhood where the restaurant was located would also get up with the code red or yellow because the area would be classified as high risk.

This is how a code system works that has also been shaken by the new instructions: people no longer need to show the green code with the negative PCR test to travel between provinces or to enter public places,

more vaccines

The authorities have announced that they

In China there are about 85 million people over the age of 60 who have not received the third booster dose.

And only 65.8% of those over 80 years of age have the complete vaccine regimen.

Last year there were small attempts at protest when in some provinces an attempt was made to demand the obligation to present a vaccination certificate to enter office buildings, supermarkets or the subway.

But with popular resistance to the mandate, especially from the elderly, the national health authorities urged local governments to correct the measure, asking that vaccination continue to be voluntary.

In China

so that their fear of punctures is erased.

Even in Beijing they tried to encourage them with checks for 50 euros per dose, or by giving them eggs and toilet paper in supermarkets.

In addition to the rejection of vaccines by the elderly, another problem facing the country is the

The second world power has nine nationally developed vaccines approved by regulators.

There is even a serum that is inhaled and that has already begun to be tested in Beijing and Shanghai.

But none of the vaccines have been updated to control the omicron variant and its more contagious subvariants.

In addition, authorities have yet to give the green light to use any of the foreign-made mRNA sera that clinical trials show are more effective against severe omicron infections.

Constraints that hold

China is the only major economy that

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Its borders have been closed since March 2020. The only relaxation movements in that direction were approved at the beginning of November: the country's entry quarantine -limited to Chinese citizens and foreigners with a residence permit, with a business visa or of studies - was reduced from seven to five days, followed by three days of home isolation.

Those travelers can now enter China with a negative PCR within 48 hours before the flight, rather than two as previously required.

The country is also opening up to more international flights, and companies will not suffer a penalty of cancellations if positive cases are reported on those routes.

A measure that will translate into cheaper flights to the Asian giant.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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