It will nonetheless keep some of the spirit of zero-Covid alive. Journalists who attend its tightly scripted press conferences will need to briefly quarantine beforehand. At an event that deals not in detail but above all in the symbolism of the Chinese Communist party, the fight against the virus cannot be abandoned as abruptly as it was everywhere else.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

The Chinese embassy in Seoul announced on Tuesday it had stopped issuing short-term visas for South Korean travellers after Beijing vowed to punish additional entry requirements on arrivals from China over the wave of infections spreading through the country.

In a notice posted to WeChat, the embassy said it would begin reissuing visas after South Korea ended its “discriminatory entry restrictions against China”.

Yet some countries have launched a charm offensive in an effort to lure Chinese tourists back to their shores after nearly three years of closed borders and interrupted travel.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

The National Health Commission on Monday unveiled the move as part of a wider announcement that downgraded the country’s management of Covid-19, a virus which is currently sweeping the nation, and definitively abandoned a host of other preventive measures.

The NHC said that more than 90 per cent of cases of the omicron variant were “mild or asymptomatic”, part of a shift in tone towards coronavirus as it rages across a country where until recently very few of the 1.4bn population had contracted it.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

Clinics designated for Covid-19 patients are quickly filling up, and some hospitals have begun rationing ibuprofen and paracetamol. The city’s 22mn residents have emptied pharmacy shelves of fever-reducing medicine and rapid antigen tests.

“We have a child with a high fever but all the pharmacies are out of ibuprofen,” said a Beijing resident surnamed Lin. “It came too fast, we didn’t have time to prepare.”

Ma Han, 28, said he had relied on friends to find medicine and antigen testing kits after his wife developed a fever on Monday. “I looked at all the delivery platforms — Meituan, Ele.me, JD — they either don’t have anything in stock or could not deliver within the day,” he said.

Residents of other Chinese cities have been stockpiling resources amid widespread lockdowns this year. A new report from Bain & Company and Kantar Worldpanel tracking the behaviour of consumers in China showed purchases of instant noodles rose 18 per cent in the first nine months of this year.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

Popular discontent over the zero-Covid policy spilled over in late November, spreading across the country. Since then, the government has unveiled a sweeping nationwide relaxation of the rules amid outbreaks in several of its biggest cities. But what may have been less obvious to the outside world is that physically moving between those cities has become harder than it has been for decades — and the problem is unlikely to disappear overnight.

In the early stages of the pandemic, the government’s attempts to eliminate the virus constrained travel between China and the rest of the world. Later on, that applied to travel within the country itself. The Shanghai travel rules (which were cancelled on Wednesday, just a few weeks after their introduction) were introduced as a defence against rising cases elsewhere in China, which recently hit record daily highs. Even if travel now becomes easier, the environment in the country has for years involved myriad risk calculations, such as those of unplanned quarantine and hiccups in the digital testing system.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

The soaring number of close contacts, driven by a rise in cases to near record levels, is putting immense strain on a Covid-19 policy that in contrast with the rest of the world aims to eliminate rather than live with the virus.

China’s strategy has evolved since the start of the pandemic. While authorities have often relied on citywide lockdowns, most notably in Wuhan in early 2020 and in Shanghai in 2022, they also use a sophisticated track and trace system that quickly quarantines close contacts of infections for “medical observation”.

Local governments have invested in building temporary isolation facilities. In October, Shanghai confirmed it would build a 3,000-person facility on Fuxing Island at a cost of about $220mn, designed for both close contacts and positive cases.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

“You need to quarantine,” a man on the other end of the line said in Mandarin. He was calling from the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “I’ll come and get you in about four or five hours.”

I dashed out of my hotel to stock up on crucial supplies. Based on advice from colleagues and my previous experience of quarantine in China, these included: tinned tuna, tea, biscuits, three types of vitamin, four varieties of Haribo sweets, Tupperware, a yoga mat, a towel, cleaning equipment, an extension cable, a large number of books, eye drops, a tray, a mug and a coaster with a painting of the countryside surrounding Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai called for a relaxation of China’s strict zero-Covid policy as it found that around a fifth of the 307 companies it surveyed were pulling back on investment, mostly as a result of coronavirus measures.

Although 55 per cent of the businesses remained optimistic over a longer term horizon of a three-to-five year period, this was the lowest level since the survey began in 1999.

Factories in China have often resorted to so-called “closed loop” systems, where workers do not leave the site in order to continue working under lockdowns. This week, viral videos circulated of workers saying they were unable to access supplies at a factory of Foxconn, which makes Apple iPhones.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale

Multiple districts this week confirmed the closure of entertainment venues, such as bars and cinemas, as the authorities rushed to contain the latest outbreak while case numbers remain low. On Thursday, 47 infections were reported for the previous day, the most since mid-July.

Close contacts of positive cases, identified through the country’s vast track-and-trace system, were sent to quarantine hotels and centres and their buildings were subjected to temporary lockdowns, in a sign of the city’s commitment to stamping out any outbreaks of the virus.

One white-collar professional in the district of Pudong who asked to be identified only by his surname Hou was taken to spend 10 days in a quarantine centre on Sunday night because he was a close contact of a case on a flight into Shanghai last Tuesday. He had flown into Shanghai to avoid a lockdown in his native Gansu province, where his parents’ home was in the process of being fenced off.

Hou said he was told by the Pudong Centre for Disease Control that the definition of close contact had been strengthened recently. Previously, on public transport, only passengers close to the confirmed case would be classified as such, but now all the passengers on the plane are determined to be close contacts.

Shanghai’s tally of 47 cases on Wednesday included just two outside quarantine facilities but came after several days of zero Covid cases in late September.

Residents of the city must take a PCR test every three days at one of many temporary booths on street corners. If the result is negative, a QR code on their phone turns green. This must be scanned to enter most buildings and public transport and is used to trace contacts.

On Wednesday evening, mainland epidemic expert Liang Wannian, who led the Covid Response Expert Team at the National Health Commission, said in a state broadcast that while the government and people were looking forward to a return to the situation before 2019, there was currently no timetable for such a development.

Reporting by Thomas Hale and Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai and Andy Lin and Cheng Leng in Hong Kong

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Thomas Hale