It's been announced that quarantine for inbound travelers is being cut by two days and the requirement to identify and isolate secondary close contacts is also ending in the capital Beijing though a new wave of infections has led to the closure of tourist attractions and the city's parks.

With a negative test required to enter offices and leisure facilities.

On thursday, authorities reported just over 10.5 1000 new domestically transmitted cases nationwide.

Fabian krishna is a journalist in Beijing and when we spoke earlier he told me more about the covid measures that are now being relaxed.

Yet today the standing committee of the politburo released 20 new rules to quote unquote optimize and adjust the pandemic strategy here.

And that includes reduction of Karent een both for inbound travelers but also for close contacts of covid cases.

And then also there won't be any so called secondary contacts anymore that have been traced previously and have been led to a lot of you know guaranteeing time for people also.

What is new is the mass testing that has been going on here especially in the big cities will be significantly reduced and also the cancelation of um international flights because of imported covid cases.

This practice will also be suspended.

So I would say this is the first major step towards the reopening of the country even though the country.

I mean china still sticks to zero Covid, it's a mini step but definitely the first step towards shifting the pandemic strategy and yet china is still recording a high number of cases by its own standards.

So so why now why did authorities decide to ease these restrictions now?

Yeah the numbers are indeed very high.

I mean for chinese standards um the highest number basically since early May.

So more than half a year.

And also in Beijing we have the highest number also since half a year.

Why now?

I mean the economic pain induced by those lockdowns they are really increasing by the day.

I mean that gives the chinese government a lot of pressure to adjust their pandemic management.

Secondly also the frustration among the public is also increasing the patients to comply with all the very strict and sometimes unnecessary rules has decreased.

So that's that's another point.

And the government has previously acknowledged already that there was a lot of unnecessary human suffering due to the excess excess enforcement of pandemic rules.

For example medical emergency cases that could not be treated because of strict lockdowns etcetera etcetera.

So they are adjusting it and again it's a small step and we will have to see how it is enforced and implemented.

But definitely the first major breakthrough towards a reopening reporting from Beijing.