Covid-19 in China: back to work, employees torn between relief and concern
People in masks in the Beijing subway during the coronavirus epidemic, December 19, 2022. © NOEL CELIS / AFP
Text by: Stéphane Lagarde Follow
2 mins
Despite the surge in contamination, the relaxation of health restrictions continues in Beijing where the municipality has announced the reopening of indoor entertainment venues and gymnasiums.
Some of the employees infected in recent days are also returning to work after seven days of isolation at home.
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From our correspondent in Beijing and
Louise May
from the RFI office in China,
At the foot of the Guomao office towers, the sidewalks cough in the business district in Beijing.
Here, we are still far from the crowds of the great days.
Two weeks after the lifting of health restrictions and
the tsunami of Covid infections
which froze the Chinese capital, life is gradually resuming.
For Qin, a computer engineer from Lanfang, a city in neighboring Hebei province, it's the first day in the office.
“I had the Covid last week.
Now it's okay,
he says.
Almost everyone was sick in the company.
Today, most employees are handed over.
The instruction is: if you can come to work, come, but you can also work at home.
I came back this morning.
I stayed three months with my parents in my home town.
»
Concern over drug shortages
Sanitary bubble in the sanitary bubble, the city of Beijing has long been closed or difficult to access from the outside.
But the “zero Covid” era is over.
Among the measures announced Monday, December 19 by the municipal health commission, was posed the fact for positive cases to be able to return to work after having self-isolated for a week at home, and this, without the need to present a PCR result.
Wrapped up in her penguin down jacket and mask on her nose, this marketing employee, originally from Hunan in the center of the country, is happy to find her colleagues.
Like her, they all had the Covid-19.
“
It's our second day on the job after coming back negative.
About 60% of employees have returned to the office.
After that, it's not back to normal.
We worry about small towns.
I wanted to buy fever medicine for my parents in the countryside and couldn't find any.
»
The young woman is worried, because the shortage of medicines is even greater in rural areas where the Covid wave should arrive in force: the fault of the spring traffic of tens of millions of Chinese for the Lunar New Year holidays.
►Also read:
In China, with the end of “zero Covid”, a rush on traditional medicine and peaches in syrup
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