"At the end of last week the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party affirmed 20 amendments to the “Zero Covid” policy that has dominated life in the country for over two years.
Although the headline statements preserve the rhetoric of Zero Covid (and Bill Hayton is right to be sceptical in his UnHerd piece that they will drop it completely) the announcement added up to a fundamental change in approach. Amendment 2, for example — no longer tracking close contacts of close contacts of an infected person — may not sound like a big step, but it will greatly reduce the number of people being isolated and removed to quarantine facilities who aren’t even infected. Another amendment allowing home quarantine even in high-risk areas will further reduce the numbers in those facilities, which have been one of the more visibly extreme features of the Chinese response."
