In Beijing - if you have COVID - they no longer drag you off to centralized quarantine - isolate at home is the message now. I got a message from my community to this effect and also confirmed by a few friends who tested positive last week. The virus is spreading like wildfire and there's a very small likelihood that they will do a full lockdown, so things may open up faster than we expect...

I also noticed that Shanghai (and Beijing?) subways will no longer require QR codes. If true, I'd expect to see fast implementation.

Actually most major cities no longer require health code checks for riding public transport as of Friday. Looks like COVID zero is still in place in theory, but the only way they can implement it is a strict lockdown in BJ and other cities, which I doubt they want to do. Looks like this is the beginning of the re-opening.

Isn't the main driver for opening public transit that it makes charging money for tests less contentious? Regardless, I'm hard pressed to think of a more conducive environment to spreading germs than a packed subway car.

Just lets not kid ourselves though. This is going get wild, REAL fast.

I guess masks and keeping distance and less public interactions might mean it’s spreading just that (little) enough that health services can handle it.

omicron isn’t much dangerous and those that get it mostly don’t feel worse than a cold.

and the Chinese vaccines do help to some degree even against it. Those that didn’t want the vaccine.. well.. Singapore showed how you handle it.

get through well with it, China.

it’s been a fun time to be at the Republic of China just now. Hopefully the rest of the country can follow suit..

I wonder if they'll suppress need about any new outbreaks to pretend it was their choice and a successful choice to open back up and everything is fine... Or if they'll amplify news of outbreaks as an "I told you so".

Masks didn't slow the spread that much for HK back in Feb 2022, and mask compliance is a lot lower in China.

This was their choice. They decided on abandoning Zero-Covid with the 7+3 scheme a few months back, and then accelerated it with the 5+3 scheme in November. Don't kid yourself, they could've held out against Omicron if they wanted to, just look at Shanghai back in May. However, they have decided that it was no longer worth the cost.

Latest development in Beijing: they just re-opened some (~30% ?) of the testing stations again, after realizing that many places are still requiring a recent negative test (either max. 24, 48 or 72 old) but hardly anyone was actually able to get a test done!
My dilemma now is: to test or not to test. There's now a considerable danger of testing "positive", as they're still analyzing the test results of 10 people together.
Many people are now reporting that they either know someone directly or second hand that has tested positive. It is definitely spreading FAST now, and far beyond what the 'official' numbers are stating. Not that long ago (two, three weeks ago), no one ever heard of anyone actually testing positive.

When ten swabs per tube became the norm about five months ago, I initially went out of my way to find single swab/tube locations (or limited myself to mass testing, which has remained single swab), but I eventually decided this was irrational on my part because if anyone who lives or works near me tests positive, it's going to impact me, regardless of whether or not our samples are bundled.

They've given up. The protests were the nail in the coffin for zero covid. China will be completely open again before May of next year.

I agree. I just hope the cancellation of inbound quarantine and restoration of flights come sooner than that. But May is a pretty good guess.

Absolutely, and the protests were probably exactly what they were waiting for, as it now allows the narrative to be:

1. "See? We do listen to the will of the people. We kept Covid out as long as it was supported by general sentiment of the people, and now that that sentiment is potentially turning, we are following suit"

...and, once community spread start skyrocketing - and cases, ICU hospitalisations and, inevitably, deaths start spiking:

2. "This is what you guys wanted" -- a message to both anti-Zero Covid proponents, and even to some extent foreign media (although the narrative will of course be very different there)


We went through a very similar process in SG and it was handled similarly - from a narrative perspective - by the authorities here. Same playbook, but very different circumstances obviously.

Yes, the same pattern also played out in Australia and New Zealand. The protests got pretty wild in Australia.