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A bit of good news for you to take into your weekend. The State Department for COVID Prevention and Control — that is, the national governing organ from which all provinces and municipalities are getting their rules and procedures from — have decreed a number of new amendments to national Covid prevention strategy. In an official WeChat post released this afternoon a number of changes have been outlined.

Here are the bullet points:

Close contacts to do 5 days of central quarantine plus 3 days home monitoring

The situation before was such that peoples determined to be close contacts to confirmed cases has to spend 7 days in COVID jail plus 3 at home. This has been reduced to 5+3.

"Spill over contacts" get 7 days home quarantine

The situation before was such that people in the same area as a confirmed case would have to go to central quarantine for 7 days. Now they're saying your code will turn red and you'll have to stay home instead.

China arrivals to do 5+3

Down from 7+3. The release also specifically states that they'll streamline the process for business travelers and people who are in China for sporting events.

Risk area categories adjusted from High, Medium, and Low to just High and Low

The gesture here is to reduced what qualifies as a high risk area. High risk areas will be generally defined as single buildings and units as apposed to whole neighborhoods. (See: Changning a few months ago.) High risk areas that don't turn up new cases within five days return to low risk.

The circuit breaker for inbound flights shall be cancelled

Flights found to be arriving in China with positive cases will no longer be cancelled for a cool off period, as was previously the policy.

"It is strictly forbidden to arbitrarily close school and classes..."

From the horse's mouth: "Local Party committee and governments should fulfill territorial responsibilities and strictly implement unified national prevention and control policies. It is strictly forbidden to arbitrarily close schools and classes, stop production, block traffic without approval, arbitrarily adopt "silent" management, arbitrarily close control, stop medical treatment, and other kinds of heavy handed behavior."

Yes! Exactly!

In addition to these central, tangible policy chances, the release also goes on to state that they'll be looking at how aggregate, large scale nucleic acid testing is done, redefining the criteria for determining how positivity of persons entering China in reached, and strengthening medical resources and, in particular, vaccine rates and availability.