Relief and concern. In China, the authorities are responding to the public’s anger with a very significant easing of anti-Covid health restrictions. Since the weekend of December 3, the announcements are linked in many cities and provinces. The latest: several municipalities declared on December 5 that Covid tests will no longer be necessary to access public places.
>> Covid-19: China is not done with the virus… nor with the restrictions
But this lifting of restrictions was not prepared… and the whole population remembers what happened in March in Hong Kong: the Covid-19 then caused thousands of deaths. Transposed to the scale of China, this gives impressive figures. Thus, an article from the Center for Preventive Medicine in Shanghai mentions some 233 million contaminations and, above all, two million deaths, due to an insufficiently vaccinated population and a hospital structure unable to cope.
“It’s not like abroad here”
Under these conditions, the sudden change in health policy scares many Chinese people. “I worry about the elderly and the children. Here it is not like abroad… The epidemic was under control for a long time”explains a Beijinger, before blowing that “It’s hard to accept this change all of a sudden.” As for other residents, the end of anti-Covid measures is premature: “I think it is necessary to control and impose a PCR test every three days because we do not have a specific treatment yet”warns another woman.
China is lifting lockdowns, which will increase chaos in a short time. But such transition won’t be long. I estimate by the Chinese New Year, new adaptability will emerge among people, confidence will be on a new foundation & Chinese economy will usher in a relatively strong rebound.
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) December 4, 2022
Some voices are no more reassuring. On Twitter, the editorialist of the very official GlobalTimesHu Xijin, for his part predicts a “short transitory period of chaos” but, he assures, “for a short period: until Chinese New Year, at the end of January“.
