China announces nationwide easing of COVID-19 restrictions

China announced today, Dec. 7, a nationwide easing of COVID-19 restrictions signalling a sharp change in the national strategy to quell public discontent and reboot the economy.

The 10 new measures include allowing certain categories of people to quarantine at home instead of in centralized camps, eliminating the requirement to take a COVID-19 test to enter most of the public places and accelerating vaccinations for the elderly.

The measures also stipulate that areas not classified as high-risk cannot stop work or production.

The move comes after Beijing's costly lockdowns hit the world's second-largest economy and sparked public protests that presented a rare challenge to President Xi Jinping.

These changes do not mark a complete undoing of the strict zero-COVID policy, but still represent a significant easing of measures that have weighed on the economy by disrupting the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people, forcing many small businesses to close and driving up youth unemployment.