Manufacturers and eateries keen to stay open in China are preferring to err on the side of caution, by retaining COVID-19 curbs until they get a clearer picture of just how workplaces will be affected by the easing of stringent measures.
The world's second largest economy is bracing for a wave of infections as it relaxes a "zero-COVID" policy, winding down a campaign of hunting out and isolating infections as it hands back to individuals most of the task of detection and treatment.
In sparse comments on workplace conditions, however, national health officials have urged that high-risk areas should be much more narrowly defined, while production or business operations continue elsewhere.
"We are still under closed loop management with workers not allowed to leave the factory," said a manager at a leading stainless steel mill in eastern China, who gave his surname as Dai.
"It won’t relax any time soon," he added, saying the mill wanted to hold down infections as much as possible with the system in which workers live and work onsite, isolated from the wider world.
The comments came as businesses told Reuters they were sizing up the new uncertainty, expecting to have to grapple with long periods of absence by sick workers that could crimp operations, perhaps for months longer.
While authorities have scrapped testing as a pre-requisite for many activities, hotpot chain Haidilao said it would continue to require daily PCR tests for staff working at its dine-in outlets in Beijing, the capital.
Many nations exiting COVID curbs overcame similar challenges in restoring business activity, but Chinese firms' scramble spotlights the difficulties ahead in reviving a slowing economy rendered a global outlier by the zero-COVID approach.
"Many of my workers with heavy mortgage burdens want to earn more money to have a good Lunar New Year," said Yang Bingben, whose factory in the eastern city of Wenzhou makes valves for industrial use.
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