PremiumThe Xi Jinping government on 7 December decided to ease their stringent Zero Covid Policy after it faced a rare mass protest across the country. The policy has seen China go into large scale lockdowns disrupting regular life and economy.
The state-run "Communications Itinerary Card", which tracks whether someone has been to a high-risk area based on their phone signal for seven days, will go offline at 12 am Tuesday after more than two years in operation, AFP reported.
The Chinese government is preparing on Monday to de-activate a mobile app used to track the travel histories of a population of 1.4 billion people.
Millions of people have been mandated to key in their phone numbers to produce its signature green arrow in order to travel between provinces or enter events, according to several reports.
-China has reported fewer fresh cases of Covid but experts warn that Omicron variant is spreading rapidly across the country
-Chinese government has dropped testing prior to many activities, reined in quarantine and is preparing on Monday to de-activate a mobile app used to track the travel histories of a population of 1.4 billion people.
-The authorities have however, continued to urge mask-wearing and vaccinations, particularly for the elderly.
-People queued outside fever clinics at China's hospitals for COVID-19 checks on Monday, a new sign of the rapid spread of symptom
-Chinese residents took to social media to share screenshots of their last logins into the app, after it was dismantled by the government.
-China's stocks markets broadly retreated and the yuan eased from a near three-month high hit in the previous session, as investors fretted that rising infections might disrupt consumption and manufacturing.
-The move to expand hospitals suggests the ruling Communist Party under President Xi Jinping will tolerate more cases without quarantines or shutting down travel or businesses as it winds down its zero-Covid strategy
-China's Covid controls kept its infection rate low but crushed already weak economic growth and prompted complaints about the rising human cost. The official death toll is 5,235, compared with 1.1 million for the United States.
-The state-backed newspaper Shanghai Securities News, Zhang Wenhong, head of a team of experts in the commercial hub, said the current outbreak could peak in a month, though an end to the pandemic might be three to six months away, according to Reuters
-The numbers of patients waiting to be admitted into emergency and fever clinics were growing, a doctor who works in a respiratory department at a Beijing hospital was quoted by the state-backed Global Times newspaper on Sunday as saying.
(With inputs from Reuters)