Beijing opens up restaurants, cinemas as China continues easing Covid-19 curbs

A staff member wipes a seat at a restaurant in Beijing on June 2, 2022. - Reuters

BEIJING (Bloomberg): Life in Beijing will take a step closer to returning to normal Monday (June 6), as the capital rolls back Covid-19 restrictions having previously declared the latest outbreak of the virus was under control.

Public transport will resume in most districts, except Fengtai and some parts of Changping, allowing workers to return to the office and restaurants to start dine-in services, local authorities said Sunday. Entertainment facilities like cinemas will open in most areas, with capacity capped at 75%. Residents are allowed to move about freely as long as they have a negative Covid test result within the past 72 hours. The previous requirement was 48 hours.

The capital reported 6 infections for Sunday, down from 19 on Saturday.

China has trumpeted its Covid Zero approach, which included an unprecedented two-month lockdown of Shanghai and harsh restrictions elsewhere, for bringing its outbreak under better control.

But its success has come at an enormous economic and social cost and infections continue to flare across the country, underscoring the challenges officials face in trying to pivot away from a strategy that puts cities at constant risk of repeatedly locking down and reopening.

Local governments should strike a more efficient balance between Covid control and economic development, Lei Zhenglong, an official at the National Health Commission, said at a briefing on Sunday. Authorities have laid out nine arbitrary measures, including around travel and quarantine, that will be banned in order to ease the burden on the economy, he said.

China’s zero-tolerance approach has left the country isolated from the rest of the world and most economists predict it will fail to meet its growth target for this year. The cycle of lockdowns has roiled global supply chains, with some factories shut for months and residents subject to movement restrictions, mass testing and mandatory isolation of all Covid cases and their close contacts.

In Shanghai, cases fell to 8 from 22 on Saturday. Relief over last week’s lifting of a grueling lockdown has been curtailed somewhat by an uptick in cases outside government mandated quarantine, with three cases found on Sunday. Residents living in compounds where new cases have been found are thrust back into lockdown.

China’s overall outbreak has been trending down steadily, but prevention remains "complicated” with new clusters emerging, the NHC’s Zhenglong said.

The Inner Mongolia region reported 49 cases, while the northeastern city of Dandong announced 13 new local infections. The county of Donggang, governed by Dandong and home to a port that’s a hub of trade with North Korea, imposed travel restrictions on Saturday due to rising local cases.