December 14, 2022: -On Tuesday, People in China marked the withdrawal of a state-mandated app used to track if they had travelled to Covid-stricken areas in the recent loosening of some of the world’s most burdensome anti-virus rules.

In the previous week, China started axing critical parts of its stringent “zero-Covid” regime at the beginning of widespread protests against the curbs the previous month, marking a significant show of public discontent in mainland China when President Xi Jinping began to power in 2012.

This has included dropping mandatory testing before many public activities, reining in quarantine, and shutting down an app  “known as itinerary code”, which critics had stated could be used for colossal surveillance and social control of the people.

On Monday, as authorities deactivated the app at midnight, China’s four telecoms company declared they would delete users’ data associated with the application. Netizens dragged this to the social media platform Weibo to encourage its demise.

“Goodbye itinerary code; I hope never to see you again,” wrote one user. “The hand that was going out to exert power in the epidemic should currently be pulled back,” wrote another.

Itinerary codes were used to track domestic travel within China. At the same time, authorities also use known as health codes that residents must scan entering public venues to check if they may have been in contact with the virus.

While authorities have not stated their demise, several cities, including Shanghai, have stated that residents are no longer needed to show these codes when which enter places such as stores and restaurants.