China's looser anti-COVID measures met with relief, caution

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A day after China announced the rollback of some of its most stringent COVID-19 restrictions, people across the country are greeting the news with a measure of relief but also caution, as many wait to see how the new approach will be implemented.

Following nationwide protests last month against China's harsh anti-pandemic policies, the government announced Wednesday it was easing some of the strictest measures. Among the most significant changes is that people who test positive for COVID-19 but show no symptoms, or only mild symptoms, can now stay at home rather than being forced into a government field hospital.

Online, government ministries and hospitals are already switching their messaging about how to deal with COVID-19 at home if one gets sick, marking an abrupt 180-degree turn from its policy before Wednesday, when it required all who tested positive to be taken to a government field hospital, a temporary facility built to treat COVID-19 patients.

A team working for a prominent government doctor, Zhang Wenhong, put out a lengthy explainer Thursday on the virus, emphasizing the vast majority of cases won't require hospitalization and noting that the virus is here to stay.

“The past three years have made us not want to come in contact with the virus ... but actually in human society, there are thousands of microorganisms,” the team at Huashan hospital in Shanghai wrote. “Inadvertently, every year we will get sick briefly because we've been infected by several of these.”

Still, experts were careful to emphasize this was not the end of COVID-19 containment.

“It is not that we are going to lie flat. Precision prevention must be still adhered to,” said Yu Changping, a doctor in the department of respiratory medicine in the People’s Hospital of...