Chinese authorities announced on Monday that they are abandoning a program used to track residents’ movements and ensure they do not come from areas affected by the outbreak, in a new sign of abandoning the “zero COVID” strategy, AFP reported.

Coronavirus ChinaPhoto: Andy Wong / AP – The Associated Press / Profimedia

The application, called “Traffic Map”, was based on the phone signal and allowed users to prove to interlocutors (managers of hotels, office buildings, etc.) where they had been in the last seven days.

The application displays a list of cities or even areas where the user has moved. If none of these zones were classified as “high risk” (with a high number of COVID-19 cases), the app displayed a green arrow, synonymous with permitted passage.

China’s central government-run “travel map” will be deactivated from midnight Monday to Tuesday, more than two years after its launch, according to an official statement.

The decision comes less than a week after China announced a sudden and sweeping easing of public health measures – a sharp departure from its so-called “zero COVID” policy aimed at avoiding all deaths.

On Wednesday, China announced an end to large-scale lockdowns and an end to the systematic placement of people who test positive in quarantine centers – facilities that are heavily criticized and have widely varying levels of comfort.

Although the official number of new cases of COVID-19 has decreased significantly in recent days, this does not reflect the reality of the current epidemiological wave.

The daily balance of infections with the new coronavirus takes into account only PCR tests conducted by laboratories, and not self-tests, which are conducted at home and which most Chinese residents do not declare.

On Sunday, one of China’s leading experts in the fight against COVID-19, respiratory disease specialist Zhong Nanshan, said the Omicron variant was now “spreading rapidly” across the country.

The Travel Card, a national program often used to authorize interprovincial travel, runs parallel to local programs that remain the primary technical means used in everyday life to access restaurants, shops and public buildings. (Agrerpress)