Several cities relaxed their requirements for PCR tests for the population in the last few hours after the Government declared last week that “the conditions exist to adjust measures.”
PCR tests carried out in the previous 72 hours or less have been necessary for months in Chinese cities to access places such as supermarkets, parks, shops and even residential complexes and apartment buildings, leading to long queues at ticket booths. sampling that has created discontent in the population.
Cities in the coastal province of Zhejiang (east) such as Ningbo or Hangzou announced this Sunday that a negative PCR test will no longer be mandatory to take public transport and enter public places starting this Monday.
The Ningbo authorities declared that it will not be necessary to scan a tracking code with the mobile phone at the entrance of establishments, a practice that leaves a record that one has visited a store and that is common in the Asian country for almost two years to be able to track covid cases and close contacts.
For its part, Shanghai, located north of Zhejiang, also does not require a negative nucleic acid result to take public transport and access tourist attractions, although it is still necessary for restaurants and other indoor public places.
These cities thus join others such as Guangzhou and Chongqing, which last week eased their PCR requirements, despite facing thousands of new cases daily, numbers that in the past would have inevitably led to lockdowns like the ones imposed this year in Shanghai, Xian (center) or Wuhan (center).
In addition, some places allow people infected with covid or their close contacts to quarantine at home, which is a departure from the guideline of recent years, which required isolation in hospitals or quarantine centers, some of them in poor condition. sanitation conditions.
For months, the purchase of medicines against fever or cold in China has been restricted and those who buy them have to register and undergo PCR tests days later, a measure that some cities such as Hangzhou have already canceled.
CONFUSION IN BEIJING
On the contrary, establishments in the capital continue to ask customers for a negative PCR sample carried out in the previous 48 hours, despite the fact that in recent days numerous sampling stations, ubiquitous until now, have been closed. in the big Chinese cities.
With residents still needing to prove that they are PCR negative at their workplaces, the demand for PCR tests remains very high, only there are now far fewer places to perform them.
This resulted in very long queues, in some cases lasting several hours, at the sampling sites that remained open during a weekend in which the thermometers in the Chinese capital fell to minus 11 degrees Celsius.
In addition, the large volume of tests meant that the reduced testing capacity was not enough: “This Sunday I stood in line for half an hour to be able to go to the office on Monday, but the result did not come out on time and I could not go” , a resident explained to Efe.
The people of Beijing registered their discontent on the country’s social networks: “The company asks me for a test every 24 hours. I have to stand in line for an hour while being cold. Enough already,” protested a user of the Weibo social network, similar to Twitter blocked in China.
Vice Prime Minister Sun Chunlan, in charge of supervising the ‘zero covid’ policy, assured last week that the low pathogenicity of the virus and the high vaccination rate of more than 90% of the population, among other factors, have “created the conditions” for the country to “adjust the measures against the pandemic” as it is in “a new situation”.
Some cities began to relax the strict prevention measures of the ‘zero covid’ policy, which consists of isolating all those infected and their close contacts, strict border controls, partial or total confinement in places where cases and tests are detected. Constant PCR to the urban population.
Shortly before, the weariness of the restrictions had led to protests in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Canton or Wuhan, in which slogans such as “I don’t want PCR, I want to eat” or “give me back my freedom” were shouted, although in some instances He even called for the overthrow of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
According to official figures, since the beginning of the pandemic, 5,235 people have died in China, where some studies maintain that ‘zero covid’ has saved millions of lives.