Beijing, Dec 1 (Agency) China has signalled a shift in its Covid stance as it moves to ease some virus restrictions despite high daily case numbers. Dozens of districts in Shanghai and Guangzhou, cities that have seen rising cases, were released from lockdown measures on Thursday, the BBC reported. The country’s vice-premier also announced that the country was facing a “new situation”. It comes as China is seeing mass protests against its zero-Covid policy. The unrest was triggered by a fire in a high-rise block in the western Xinjiang region that killed 10 people last week.
Many Chinese believe long-running Covid restrictions in the city contributed to the deaths, although the authorities deny this, the BBC said. It led to days of widespread protests across various cities, which have since ebbed amid heavy a heavy police presence. Restrictions in major cities like Guangzhou were abrupted lifted on Wednesday, hours after the city saw violent protests that resulted in clashes between police and protesters, the report said. A community in the capital Beijing also allowed Covid cases with mild symptoms to isolate at home, according to a Reuters report – a far cry from protocols earlier this year which saw entire buildings and communities locked down, sometimes as a result of just one positive case. Other major cities like Shanghai and Chongqing also saw some rules relaxed, BBC reported. It comes as one of China’s most senior pandemic officials, vice-premier Sun Chunlan, said the virus’ ability to cause disease was weakening.
This comes in stark contrast to an earlier message from authorities that the country needed to maintain a strict zero-Covid policy. China has in recent days recorded its highest number of daily Covid cases since the pandemic began – with more than 36,000 cases recorded on Wednesday. However, the numbers are still tiny for a country of 1.4 billion people and officially just over 5,200 have died since the pandemic began. That equates to three Covid deaths in every million in China, compared with 3,000 per million in the US and 2,400 per million in the UK, although direct comparisons between countries are difficult.