China Halts Location Tracking App as Covid Restrictions Fall

Since its introduction in 2020, the service has scanned users’ movements using data from the country’s three telecommunications providers to determine whether they had recently been in high-risk areas, which was then used to decide if they needed testing or quarantine.

The decision to take the service offline came from China’s cabinet, known as the State Council, the tracking app’s official

WeChat

account said Monday.

Beijing said last week that it would drop many of its quarantine and testing requirements following rare nationwide protests and mounting evidence that pandemic controls were squeezing the economy.

Still, it wasn’t immediately clear that pulling the plug on the location-tracking app would do much in the short term to stimulate travel and economic activity. Similar mobile apps operated by provinces and other regional Chinese governments will remain an impediment to movement as long as they stay in use.

The bigger obstacle to an economic rebound may be a nationwide surge in Covid cases unlike any that China has experienced so far, as authorities loosen pandemic rules heading into the depths of winter.

Even with newfound freedoms and a new messaging push emphasizing the relative mildness of the Omicron subvariants of the coronavirus, many would-be travelers, shoppers and restaurant diners have chosen to remain at home. As a result, Beijing and other large Chinese cities have resembled ghost towns, a far cry from the celebratory Covid reopenings seen elsewhere around the world.

The scale of China’s coronavirus surge has been hard to measure, since daily national case counts have dropped after testing restrictions were lifted. Anecdotal evidence, meanwhile, has pointed to an explosion in new infections.

In the Chinese capital, the Beijing Emergency Medical Center urged only critically ill patients to call for ambulances, saying Saturday that emergency requests had jumped to 30,000 a day from an average of about 5,000, straining the capacity of paramedics to respond. They called on patients with mild Covid cases not to call at all.

“With the large increase in the number of calls, the current resources for answering emergency calls and dispatching ambulances are very tight, causing some critically ill patients to encounter difficulties when calling 120 for emergency help,” Chen Zhi, the center’s chief physician, wrote on China’s Twitter-like

Weibo

social-media platform.

Sales of self-testing kits, fever and cold medicines and traditional Chinese remedies have also climbed in recent days, prompting regulators to warn against hoarding. Long lines have circled around fever clinics, and many citizens have reported seeing a sudden upsurge in self-reported Covid cases in their personal circles.

Until last week, Michael Cherney, an American artist based in Beijing, didn’t know anyone who had contracted the virus in China. Then, a classmate of his daughter tested positive, followed by several friends of his family. An informal survey of his apartment complex suggested roughly half of all households had someone with Covid, he said Monday.

That now includes Mr. Cherney, who suspects that he and his daughter contracted the virus during the one brief excursion they made on Friday. “Because of online learning, we only went out once this whole week,” he said.

The symptoms hit hard, with “absolutely screaming, aching lungs,” Mr. Cherney said. But just as he contemplated visiting a hospital, his suffering eased.

“Thank you, world, for the diminished severity by the time this circled back to me,” he wrote on Instagram.

Some of China’s most prominent business leaders have gone public with their own experiences being infected with Covid, breaking with a longstanding taboo as Chinese authorities press a message that Omicron is weaker and not to be feared.

Richard Liu,

founder of e-commerce giant

JD.com Inc.,

said in a video posted on social media that those infected by the virus shouldn’t worry. He called on patients with mild cases to seek online medical help and save hospital space for those who need it.

“From my own experience, this really is milder than a cold,” Mr. Liu said.

Another prominent tycoon, Wang Shi, founder of property developer

China Vanke Co.

, said in a social media video that he had been infected while traveling overseas. He said his symptoms were relatively mild, except for an initial fever and nasal discomfort. Mr. Wang, 71, said he tested negative nine days later, holding his test strip up to the camera with a tight smile.

A commentary published Monday by the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, described the scaling back of China’s strict Covid policies as “a major decision made based on the study and judgment of the epidemic trend” that it said would “reduce the impact of the epidemic on normal production and the life of the people.”

The commentary emphasized the need for people to be vaccinated “as soon as possible,” particularly the elderly, whose vaccination rate has lagged behind the broader populace.

Last week, health authorities approved four new Covid vaccines for emergency use on the Chinese mainland, though the government has yet to approve any vaccines using the mRNA technology that has been commonly used elsewhere, and which health experts generally regard as being more effective in combating the coronavirus.

Chinese health authorities said late last month that they were planning a vaccination drive for the elderly, aiming to inoculate at least 90% of people aged 80 and above with at least one shot by the end of January. That rate stood at 77% in late November, with just 40% having received a booster shot.

In a notice sent out Monday by the Beijing Service Bureau for Diplomatic Missions, the government agency said it was working with other departments to provide a fourth booster shot for employees.

Write to Austin Ramzy at [email protected]