When Li tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday in Baoding in northern China, he expected to be quarantined for five days at a makeshift local hospital as part of the country's strict pandemic controls.
Instead, China the next day abruptly relaxed the policy that has made the world's most populous country an outlier in a world largely learning to live with COVID-19.
Li, 30, who asked to be identified only by his family name, said he was allowed to recuperate at home in the industrial city near the capital Beijing.
