“Everything is dead here”: China has a slow reopening after easing Covid-19 restrictions

Covid protection in Beijing

By Ryan Woo and Martin Quin Pollard and Josh Horwitz

BEIJING (Reuters) – Judging by the quiet streets on Friday in China’s capital Beijing and the reluctance of some businesses to abandon Covid-19 restrictions, lingering fears over the coronavirus are likely to make it difficult for a quick return to normalcy on Monday. largest economy in the world.

While the government on Wednesday loosened key parts of its strict “Covid-zero” health policy that has kept the pandemic in check for the past three years, many people seem to fear being too quick to get rid of the measures.

In the central city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus emerged in late 2019, there were more signs of life with some areas occupied by commuters on Friday. But residents say a return to normal is a long way off.

“They’ve loosened the measures, but there’s still no one around,” said a taxi driver surnamed Wang, who declined to give his full name.

“You see these roads, these streets… they should be busy, full of people. But there is no one. It’s all dead here.”

However, China has not been quiet in recent weeks, with protests against Covid-19 restrictions in many cities marking the biggest display of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago.

Just over a month after the National Health Commission stressed commitment to its strict virus containment policy, saying it was “putting people and lives first”, officials have changed course and now say people have less to fear.

But there are signs that the reassuring new message has yet to convince many of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

With the need for testing lessened and most infected people able to isolate themselves at home, some have embraced the new freedoms. For others, habits formed during months of lockdowns are proving difficult to break.

On the Beijing metro, many seats were empty on Friday night during what should have been peak hours, although the city this week ruled out the need to show negative tests to ride trains or enter offices.

Some downtown restaurants were deserted at lunchtime.

China’s tally of 5,235 Covid-19-related deaths is a small fraction of its population of 1.4 billion and extremely low by global standards. Some experts have warned that the account could rise above 1.5 million if the reopening is too rushed.

Manufacturers also remain cautious, maintaining Covid-19 restrictions until they get a clearer picture of how workplaces will be affected by the loosening of strict measures.

Analysts and business leaders expect China’s economy to recover by the end of next year, following the difficult path taken by the rest of the world to open up and try to cope with the disease.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo, Bernard Orr and editorial staff in Beijing, Brenda Goh, Josh Horwitz and Jason Xue, Zoey Zhang in Shanghai, Martin Pollard in Wuhan and Selena Li in Hong Kong.)