ivan? reporter: for the first time in months, the chinese government has announced a relaxation significantly of its strict zero covid policies and that s triggered some real excitement, for example, a surge in inquiries about plane tickets for internal travel and why is it so important? because look at some of the changes, for example, the government says that no longer will people need to be required to get negative pcr tests to go into public places like shopping malls, for example. previously a lot of cities required people to line up and get tests every 48 hours just to do things like travel on public transport or to go to public places. asymptomatic covid cases, people with mild symptoms and close contacts of covid cases are no longer going to be bundled off to government quarantine where there have been reports of kind of poor accommodation, poor food, poor sanitary conditions.
and most recently, unprecedented protests. cnn s ivan watson has more on the changes. ivan? reporter: for the first time in months, the chinese government has announced a relaxation, significant relaxation of its strict zero covid policies, and that s triggered some real excitement. for example, a surge in inquiries about plane tickets for internal travel, and why is this so important? because look at some of the changes. for example, the government says that no longer will people need to be required to get negative pcr tests to go into public places like shopping malls, for example. previously a lot of cities required people to line up and get tests every 48 hours just to do things like travel on public transport or to go to public places. asy asymptomatic covid cases, people with mild symptoms and close contacts of covid cases are no longer going to be bundled off to government quarantine where
reporter: tonight, after years of extreme covid lockdown, with shocking scenes like this of citizens pulled from their homes and forced into quarantine, china now easing covid restrictions that prompted mass protests and plunged china s economy into dangerous territory. pcr tests will no longer be required for public transportation, airports, or shopping centers in major cities. asymptomatic citizens or those with mild symptoms can stay home instead of being sent to government facilities. and entire neighborhoods can no longer be locked down because of covid-positive cases. china s government announcing this move, claiming covid is now less of a threat. but the economic pressures on the world s second-largest economy clearly played a role. major corporations concerned over supply chain and production issues, with apple reportedly accelerating plans to move its
that question before. see you later. like thousands of people, dave smith became infected with covid at the start of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. but while most people recover within a couple of weeks, dave s infection lasted almost ten months longer than any other case on the planet. during that period, he recorded 42 positive pcr tests and was admitted to hospital seven times. i ve been back to catch up with him and see how he is doing. right? yeah. nearly there. out of breath. i ll be all right. yeah. keep on. doctors call him the miracle man because dave smith had covid for ten months, but his body struggled to get rid of it because his immune
got these e mails. it was another week before the uk health security agency announced that tens of thousands may have received these false negative results from the lab in wolverhampton. it dealt mainly with people from the west and the south west. and that led to this detailed investigation into the errors that took place between the 7th of september and the 12th of october last year. it concluded that immensa had set the threshold levels for tests incorrectly. so too many came back negative. in total, 39,000 pcr tests got the wrong result and it is estimated that led to 55,000 additional infections, 684 people needing to be sent to hospital and it is thought these 23 deaths from covid. at the time when the nhs was incredibly in demand, another 624 patients using those services, i am sure that would have had a knock on