The announcement of nationwide easing of Covid restrictions by the Chinese authorities has left residents worried, as they described it as a rapid change due to draconian lockdowns which were in place for a long time.
While many locals welcomed the easing and hailed it as a step towards a return to normalcy in China, the majority of people deemed it “worrisome” for its effects and questioned how the new restrictions would be implemented.
According to CNN, several workers across China have taken down some of the outward symbols of the nation’s zero-Covid regulations, removing health code scanning signs from Metro station walls and closing some gates after the Chinese government announced removing curbs.
This comes less than two weeks after widespread demonstrations against the ‘Zero Covid’ policy erupted across the nation. Since the onset of the pandemic, millions of people have been suffering under various constraints and this announcement has come as a huge relief for them.
In the last week of November, hundreds of people in Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial hub, started publicly demonstrating against the restrictive Covid-19 regulations, as per CNN.
On November 27, university students across the country gathered on their campuses to demonstrate. On the same night, hundreds of people in Wuhan, where Covid-19 is believed to have originated, Chengdu, Beijing and other large cities took to the streets.
The protest in Shanghai was in response to a November 24 fire at an apartment building in Urumqi, the capital of China’s northwest Xinjiang region, in which at least 10 people were killed.
Media reports suspected that residents were prevented from escaping the blaze due to pandemic control barriers and Covid-related restrictions hampered emergency responders. (ANI)
This report is filed by ANI news service. TheNewsMill holds no responsibility for this content.
