China abandons a Covid tracing app but is its policy really changing?
The unusual protests in China are making the government of Xi Jinping give up on the zero Covid policy, which has announced that it will no longer track infections with the Communications Itinerary Card app but that's why this doesn't mean much
China, following the protests of the past few weeks, is reversing some of the anti-Covid restrictions and among the various symbolic measures it has decided to loosen, there is also that of disabling one of the main infection tracking apps after three years.
The decision appears to represent Beijing's willingness to abandon the zero Covid strategy, but is that really the case?
THE BEIJING AD
The Chinese government announced last night that Communications Itinerary Card, one of the national tracking apps that allowed positive people and their contacts to be identified and quarantined, would be deactivated today.
For the authorities, now that travel within the country has been facilitated thanks to the removal of restrictions, the app is considered obsolete.
HOW IT WORKED
The app, run by the state and seen as a pillar of the controversial zero Covid policy, used phone signals to track whether a person had traveled to an area considered high-risk.
People had to enter their phone number into the app to get a green arrow indicating the ability to travel between provinces and participate in events.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE COLLECTED DATA?
The app, which has 900 million users and has been used more than 60 billion times, according to China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, will delete the data of all users when it is effectively deactivated "to protect privacy, as required by law”.
WILL IT REALLY CHANGE ANYTHING?
The deactivation of the app is intended to show Beijing's willingness to change its attitude and move away from the zero Covid strategy but, according to the BBC , it is only a "highly symbolic" move that will not have a huge impact on people's daily lives because there are other local apps still in use in the country.
Communications Itinerary Card was in fact just one of the many localization apps that regulate daily life in China and many people, despite having welcomed the news, still use the scanning systems managed by their city or province to access local services and buildings public.
THE SITUATION NOW IN CHINA
However, the easing of some measures, such as allowing people to self-isolate at home instead of in a state facility and reducing mass testing, is causing a surge in cases in China, mainly due to the low level of vaccination and the use of less effective vaccines.
According to data from the authorities reported by the BBC , patients who went to hospitals in the capital on Sunday were more than 22,000, or 16 times the number of a week earlier.
SOMETHING IS CHANGING IN HONG KONG TOO
After almost three years of restrictions, Hong Kong has also announced the elimination of its LeaveHomeSafe app, which tracked infections, and the removal, starting today, of the three-day isolation for those arriving from outside. A measure which, writes Al Jazeera , has contributed to "decimating businesses and tourism" and has "inflicted enormous damage on the economy, which heavily depends on travel and trade".
However, fears persist that tourism and business will struggle to recover as they used to, in fact, although in September the obligation to quarantine in hotels for all people coming from abroad had already been eliminated, daily arrivals are currently around 20,000 people, most of whom live on the island, compared to around 350,000 in November 2019.
Hong Kong, Al Jazeera reports, is one of the only economies in the region set to end the year in recession, along with the neighboring Chinese territory of Macao and Sri Lanka.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/la-cina-abbandona-app-di-tracciamento-per-il-covid-ma-la-sua-politica-sta-davvero-cambiando/ on Wed, 14 Dec 2022 06:44:18 +0000.