Lifting Zero Covid Policy
 

Today's breaking news that asymptomatic and mild cases no longer need to quarantine in centres.

Any news on what thus means fir travel related quarantine.

Good news.

Here are the actual documents:

Announcement:
http://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/gzzcwj/202...fc94e0f0.shtml

Q&A document:
http://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/fkdt/20221...de079561.shtml

Doesn't say anything about travel from outside of the country.
For travel inside the country, from the first doc (lazy google translate)
Which is being interpreted as "non-high risk districts cannot block people from entering or leaving"

Based on what happened in Hong Kong, I'd guess there'll be a 2 or 3 month delay between domestic loosening and relaxation of international travel restrictions.

It is too early to guess it. I have my wish list, including reactivate all China visas which were suspected due to COVID.
We will just wait to see what are going to happen early next year.

The contract tracing app is dead

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/...re-2022-12-12/

No more reporting asymptomatic case numbers

Lots of sources here https://sinocism.com/p/victory-will-...ssential-eight

Can confirm, the health codes are all gone (with very few exceptions). Did rail, taxi, airport travel today without any heath codes being asked for.

source: caixin global

Cheers. Not surprising.

Patient has Covid and dies....also has slight discoloration of right index and middle finger's fingernails.....cause of death: possible complications due to fungal infection...
:o

I don't really care about their face saving nomenclature for identifying causes of death. What I care about is that they are finally opening up and ending what was becoming their stupidest policy since the CR struggle sessions.

Just end the quarantine already, it's more likely for the quarantined patient to get COVID from the dabai poking their nose now than the other way around.

https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202212220335.aspx
They do keep track of the numbers tho, only withholding it from the public.
~250 million infected already, over 50% in Beijing infected

Well, I do and did care, because it was probably the single most crucial reason how they could instill fear into the population for much of the world.
China going the complete opposite way is interesting, if nothing else.
I would have preferred a system that is somewhere in the middle, which would have been more honest, but whatever.
We seem to have had only two versions:
1) EVERYONE died of Covid
2) NO ONE died of Covid

Quarantine on entry won't last too much longer. My guess is that it's a formality only at this point to change the regulations, but they are simply swamped with other stuff, and simply haven't got around to it yet.
Matter of days or a few weeks now, I reckon.

In terms of China and "keeping track", I wouldn't exactly call this scientific or keeping track; all those figures are admittedly ESTIMATES only.
Withholding estimates from the public doesn't really have quite the impact.
And if half of your office/school/factory/WeChat group is out sick with Covid, I am pretty sure most Chinese can figure out themselves that their city's infection rate is ~50% and don't need the govt. to tell them their estimates.

What is going to be a problem for science is if they hide the IFR or CFR, which they can well calculate. It would enlightening to see if COVID indeed got milder (or not) by testing its spread in a very immunologically naïve population such as China. Or to be able to make comparisons between the mRNA vaccines and the traditional ones developed in China.

It's already impossible to tell because without a strict classification of "died with covid" vs "died from covid", the numbers are meaningless.
Granted I'm not sure this distinction was clear in other nations but it will be clear as mud in China.