Morning Brief – China announcement fails to help risk

Risk-on assets classes failed to lift, following another much-anticipated announcement from China NHC as laid out new Covid prevention and control guidelines earlier today.

Chinese officials basically said that asymptomatic patients, cases with mild symptoms can undergo home quarantine. It seems but the measures are more or less in line with what was rumoured.

Chinese stocks initially moved higher on the headlines, with the Hang Seng now up over 1.5% while the CSI tourism index is up by more than 3.5% on the day currently.

However, US futures remain in the red and the US dollar continues to move higher intraday as risk appetite starts to wane. Potentially the market was looking for a total

Quoting China’s statement today, they that “NHC To accelerate vaccination of elderly against Covid” and they are “To allow home quarantine for close contacts.”

The home quarantine basically scraps the idea of the forced lockdowns now, and this really is a huge positive going forward as it takes back the idea of government control.

The NHC also Scrapped requirement for negative Covid test in most public venues nationwide and went as far banning movement restrictions in non-high-risk zones.

Additionally, they noted that “Non-high-risk zones should not obstruct people flows, production or work” and “No longer require negative Covid test and health codes for domestic travel.”

A further measure was that High-risk zones with no new infections for 5 straight days should be released from lockdown in a timely manner according to the NHC.

And they are “To accurately define high-risk zones by building, units, households (not arbitrarily expand it to residential compounds, communities)”.