After scrapping zero-COVID policy, China retires app that tracked movements of citizens

In yet another attempt to dial down public unrest, China has declared that it will no longer be using its key COVID tracking application, just days after the country scrapped its zero-COVID policy after months of instating it. According to The Guardian, China announced on Monday that it will drop one of its most crucial forms of government’s COVID response, the “communications itinerary card”, which was an application that tracked the movements of citizens via cellular signals to determine people who had traveled to areas with a high risk of infection. 

The dismantling of the app comes as a major relief to Chinese citizens, who have held protests across the nation in recent weeks against the government’s stringent measures to control the spread of the Coronavirus and have gone as far as urging Chinese President Xi Jinping to step down. Breathing a sigh of relief, locals took to social media to bid adieu to the app.

“The past few years we have witnessed ‘history’ one time after another, and I hope that there will never be a day when it will be used again,” one user wrote.

Another added, “Goodbye itinerary card, concerts here I come.” 

The scrapping of the app comes days after the Chinese government dropped its long-running COVID policy after experiencing intense backlash from citizens and a dwindling economy. After weeks of locking horns with protesters, Jinping’s government has lifted several restrictions, with clips on social media displaying empty testing sites and quarantine areas. 

China braces for another surge in Covid cases

Despite loosening restrictions, the spread of the virus in China is yet to subdue. Local health authorities have warned of a surge in cases, and hundreds of healthcare workers have been deployed at ICUs to tackle the looming threat. “The current trend of the rapid spread of the epidemic in Beijing still exists,” said Li Ang, a spokesperson for the city’s health commission.

“The number of fever clinic visits and flu-like cases increased significantly, and the number of … emergency calls increased sharply,” Ang added during a briefing on Monday, the day when the nation reported 8,626 domestic COVID cases. Previously on Sunday, another Chinese health expert named Zhong Nanshan warned that the Omicron variant was “spreading rapidly” to the point that one infected person could further transmit the virus to 22 others.