After three years of strenuous fighting against COVID-19, China has been lifting restrictions since the end of 2022. Under the optimized COVID-19 response measures, China's economic recovery has been further boosted.

Revitalized economic, social activities

In the first two months, the total value added of the industrial enterprises above the designated size grew by 2.4 percent year on year, or 1.1 percentage points faster than that of December 2022, indicating an accelerating recovery of industrial production, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday.

The Index of Services Production saw a 5.5 percent year-on-year increase, compared to a 0.8 percent year-on-year drop in December 2022, said the NBS.

The total retail sales of consumer goods reached 7,706.7 billion yuan (about $1.12 trillion), up by 3.5 percent year on year, which "reversed the downward trend in three consecutive months since October 2022," said Fu Jiaqi, statistician from the NBS' Department of Trade and Economic Affairs.

Inbound and outbound flows have also rebounded sharply over the past two months, according to the National Immigration Administration (NIA).

Immigration authorities across China handled over 39.7 million inbound and outbound trips between January 8 to March 7, a year-on-year increase of 112.4 percent.

On February 25, exit and entry trips reached 1.013 million, marking the first time since 2020 that the number exceeded 1 million in a single day.

Since the implementation of managing COVID-19 as a Class B infectious disease, international passenger flights have steadily increased and people-to-people exchanges between the Chinese mainland and the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions fully resumed, contributing to the soaring entry and exit passenger flows, as well as the applications for entry and exit certificates, said Lin Yongsheng, spokesman of the NIA.

People's lives come first

The Chinese government considers people's life and health the top priority in policymaking.

When the virus was detected in Wuhan in late 2019, it was much more deadly. The government made a resolute and courageous decision to shut down traffic in and out of the city. It took China three months to contain the virus in Wuhan and stop it from rippling to other parts of the country.

After that, the country reacted quickly to stamp out over 100 local outbreaks under the dynamic zero COVID principle to safeguard the lives and health of the 1.4 billion people in China.

Meanwhile, the government has been pushing a nationwide vaccination drive to build up immunity protection, which has proved to be effective in preventing deaths and severe cases.

Though China remains a developing country, people's life expectancy rose from 77.4 in 2019 to 77.93 in 2020 and 78.2 in 2021.

With continuous efforts to optimize COVID-19 prevention and control measures since November 2022, China's COVID-19 response has made a smooth transition in a relatively short time, with more than 200 million people accessing medical services, nearly 800,000 severe cases receiving proper treatment, and the country's COVID-19 fatality rate remaining the world's lowest, according to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee at a meeting on February 16.

COVID-19 'basically ended' in China by February

COVID-19 had "basically ended" in China by February, although it was not "completely over" as there were still sporadic cases, according to Liang Wannian, head of the COVID-19 response expert panel at China's National Health Commission (NHC).

Liang made the remarks at a press conference held by the State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism on February 23.

China declared on February 17 a major and decisive victory in its COVID-19 prevention and control since November 2022, when the country started to adopt a series of measures to optimize its COVID-19 response.

"China has created a miracle in human history, in which a highly populous nation has successfully pulled through a pandemic," said a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that COVID-19 might no longer be a public health emergency this year.

"I am confident that this year we will be able to say that COVID-19 is over as a public health emergency of international concern," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a media briefing.