Authorities in Beijing have announced steps to ease — but not end — its 'zero COVID' policy that has kept case counts low but hurt the Chinese economy.
, and Guangdong province, one of the most populous in the country, announced it's immediately enacting the changes.Hotel quarantine will be cut to five days from seven. Travelers will still be required to isolate at home .Raising the threshold for counting a PCR test as positive.For close contacts, centralized quarantine is cut to five days from seven, with three days of home isolation still required.
Secondary contacts — that is, close contacts of people labeled close contacts of positive cases — will no longer have to undergo quarantine or medical surveillance. Residents traveling from high-risk areas to other parts of the country will no longer have to spend seven days in quarantine and instead can spend the same period in home isolation.The government reported 10,535 new domestically transmitted cases on Thursday, the highest in months, and the authorities girded for the situation to worsen.
The National Health Commission warned that the epidemic"is likely to further expand in scope and scale" due to mutations and weather factors in the winter and spring. "We must maintain our strategic determination and conduct epidemic control properly and with scientific precision," it said.
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