Monitoring Desk
BEIJING: Social media users have praised itinerary card abandonment as China announced on Monday that it would discontinue the use of an App used to track Covid-19 contacts.
The decision marked a significant step in the country’s rapid abandonment of its zero-tolerance coronavirus strategy. According to an official WeChat post, the state-run “Communications Itinerary Card,” which tracks whether someone has visited a high-risk area based on their phone signal, will go offline at 12 a.m. Tuesday after more than two years of operation.
Millions of people had to enter their phone numbers to generate the “Itinerary Card,” which was a crucial part of China’s zero-Covid policy, in order to travel between provinces or enter any events.
China announced the end of widespread lockdowns, mandatory quarantine in administrative facilities, and a broad relaxation of testing restrictions just a few days prior to making this decision, effectively abandoning its zero-Covid strategy.
Although the number of officially reported cases in the nation has significantly decreased from all-time highs last month, leading Chinese health expert Zhong Nanshan issued a warning in state media on Sunday that the predominant Omicron variant was “spreading rapidly” throughout the nation.
A final change this year reduced the tracking period from 14 to seven days after the Itinerary Card underwent several repetitions of change. In line with users’ anticipated levels of Covid exposure, the Itinerary Card was initially introduced in 2020 with a four-tier system that assigned various colors.
The majority of people use regional “health codes” administered by their city or province to enter stores and offices, making it one of a variety of tracking apps that have governed daily life in China throughout the pandemic.
Social media
Social media users praised the retirement of the Itinerary Card despite this, pointing out the symbolism of Beijing’s main tracking App being shut down. The “last” logins of many people were captured on screenshots.
On a platform similar to Twitter called Weibo, one user wrote, “Bye-bye, this announces the end of an era, and also welcomes a brand new one.” A different person wrote, “Goodbye itinerary card, concerts here I come.” Others questioned what would happen to the massive amounts of data that the app had gathered.
Weibo user: “The Itinerary Card and other comparable products mean vast amounts of personal information and private data.” “I’m hoping that there will be ways to log out and delete this.”
