Chi­na rolled back rules on iso­lat­ing peo­ple with COVID-19 and dropped virus test re­quire­ments for some pub­lic places Wednes­day in a dra­mat­ic change to a strat­e­gy that con­fined mil­lions of peo­ple to their homes and sparked protests and de­mands for Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping to re­sign.

The move adds to ear­li­er eas­ing that fu­elled hopes Bei­jing was scrap­ping its “ze­ro COVID” strat­e­gy, which is dis­rupt­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and glob­al trade. Ex­perts warn, how­ev­er, that re­stric­tions can’t be lift­ed com­plete­ly un­til at least mid-2023 be­cause mil­lions of el­der­ly peo­ple still must be vac­ci­nat­ed, and the health care sys­tem strength­ened.

Chi­na is the last ma­jor coun­try still try­ing to stamp out trans­mis­sion of the virus while many na­tions switch to try­ing to live with it. As they lift re­stric­tions, Chi­nese of­fi­cials have al­so shift­ed to talk­ing about the virus as less threat­en­ing — a pos­si­ble ef­fort to pre­pare peo­ple for a sim­i­lar switch.

Peo­ple with mild cas­es will be al­lowed for the first time to iso­late at home, the Na­tion­al Health Com­mis­sion an­nounced, in­stead of go­ing to some­times over­crowd­ed or un­san­i­tary quar­an­tine cen­tres. That ad­dress­es a ma­jor ir­ri­ta­tion that helped to dri­ve protests that erupt­ed Nov. 25 in Shang­hai and oth­er cities.

Pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties ex­cept for “spe­cial places,” such as schools, hos­pi­tals and nurs­ing homes, will no longer re­quire vis­i­tors to pro­duce a “health code” on a smart­phone app that tracks their virus tests and whether they have been to ar­eas deemed at high risk of in­fec­tion.

Lo­cal of­fi­cials must “take strict and de­tailed mea­sures to pro­tect peo­ple’s life, safe­ty and health” but at the same time “min­i­mize the im­pact of the epi­dem­ic on eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment,” the state­ment said.

Chi­na’s re­stric­tions have helped to keep case num­bers low, but that means few peo­ple have de­vel­oped nat­ur­al im­mu­ni­ty, a fac­tor that might set back re­open­ing plans if cas­es surge and au­thor­i­ties feel com­pelled to reim­pose re­stric­tions.

Still, af­ter three years spent warn­ing the pub­lic about COVID-19’s dan­gers, Chi­nese of­fi­cials have be­gun to paint it as less threat­en­ing.

Peo­ple with mild cas­es “can re­cov­er by them­selves with­out spe­cial med­ical care,” said Wu Zun­y­ou, chief epi­demi­ol­o­gist of the Chi­na Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol, on his so­cial me­dia ac­count.

“The good news is that the da­ta show the pro­por­tion of se­vere cas­es is low,” said Wu.

The lat­est changes are “small steps” in a grad­ual process aimed at end­ing re­stric­tions, said Liang Wann­ian, a mem­ber of an ex­perts group ad­vis­ing the Na­tion­al Health Com­mis­sion, at a news con­fer­ence.

“We will look at it, study and judge, and analyse again,” said Liang, one of Chi­na’s most promi­nent an­ti-epi­dem­ic ex­perts.

The gov­ern­ment’s goal is “to re­turn to the state be­fore the epi­dem­ic, but the re­al­iza­tion of the goal must have con­di­tions,” Liang said.

The gov­ern­ment an­nounced a cam­paign last week to vac­ci­nate the el­der­ly that health ex­perts say must be done be­fore Chi­na can end re­stric­tions on vis­i­tors com­ing from abroad. They say the rul­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty al­so needs to build up Chi­na’s hos­pi­tal sys­tem to cope with a pos­si­ble rise in cas­es.

But pub­lic frus­tra­tion is ris­ing now, as mil­lions of peo­ple are re­peat­ed­ly con­fined at home for un­cer­tain pe­ri­ods, schools close abrupt­ly and eco­nom­ic growth falls.

The changes have been rolled out de­spite a re­newed spike in in­fec­tions start­ed in Oc­to­ber. On Wednes­day, the gov­ern­ment re­port­ed 25,231 new cas­es, in­clud­ing 20,912 with­out symp­toms.

Xi’s gov­ern­ment has held up “ze­ro COVID” as proof of the su­pe­ri­or­i­ty of Chi­na’s sys­tem com­pared with the Unit­ed States and West­ern coun­tries. Chi­na’s of­fi­cial death toll is 5,235 since the start of the pan­dem­ic ver­sus a U.S. count of 1.1 mil­lion.

Rules were left in place that warn apart­ment and of­fice build­ings might be sealed if in­fec­tions are found. Com­plaints that fam­i­lies are con­fined for weeks at a time with un­cer­tain ac­cess to food and med­i­cine were a key dri­ver of the protests.

The rul­ing par­ty switched ear­ly this year to sus­pend­ing ac­cess to neigh­bour­hoods or dis­tricts where in­fec­tions were dis­cov­ered in­stead of iso­lat­ing whole cities.

On Wednes­day, the gov­ern­ment said the scope of clo­sures will be nar­rowed still fur­ther to sin­gle apart­ment floors or build­ings in­stead of neigh­bour­hoods.

It said schools in com­mu­ni­ties with no out­breaks must re­turn to in-per­son teach­ing.

That ap­peared to be a re­sponse to com­plaints that lo­cal lead­ers, threat­ened with the loss of their jobs in the event of out­breaks, im­pose clo­sures that are de­struc­tive, might be un­nec­es­sary and ex­ceed what the cen­tral gov­ern­ment al­lows.

The demon­stra­tions in at least eight ma­jor cities and on dozens of uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es were the most wide­spread dis­play of pub­lic dis­sent in decades. In Shang­hai, some pro­test­ers shout­ed the po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­plo­sive de­mand for Xi, Chi­na’s most in­flu­en­tial fig­ure in decades, to re­sign. —BEI­JING (AP)

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Sto­ry by JOE Mc­DON­ALD | As­so­ci­at­ed Press