Beijing drops negative Covid test requirement

Workers in protective gear in Beijing on December 6 2022. China is reporting fewer Covid-19 cases as a wave that started to accelerate last month appears to be tailing off amid a pullback in the sweeping testing regime that saw a negative result needed to even enter a public park.

“This might be the first step towards reopening from this pandemic,” Hu Dongxu, 27, said as he swiped his travel card to enter a train station in Beijing, which has also dropped the need for tests to ride the subway. China may announce 10 new national easing measures as early as Wednesday, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

“My parents are still very cautious,” said James Liu, 22, a student in Shenzhen in the southern province of Guangdong, where authorities “abruptly” dropped testing requirements for entry into the family’s residential compound.Analysts at Nomura estimate that areas now under lockdown represent about 19.3% of China’s total GDP, equivalent to the size of India’s economy, down from 25.1% last Monday.

Tong Zhaohui, director of the Beijing Institute of Respiratory Diseases, said on Monday that the latest Omicron variant of the disease had caused fewer cases of severe illness than the 2009 global influenza outbreak, according to Chinese state television.

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