Face masks are no longer necessary in outdoor spaces, offices, and schools in “low-risk” areas of China, a leading epidemiologist said at a press conference Wednesday.

Wu Zunyou, chief infectious disease expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that as long as individuals in low-risk areas stick to relatively fixed routines — such as traveling between work and home — they don’t have to wear face masks anymore.

When COVID-19 emerged months ago as a serious threat to public health, China’s top health authority strongly advised people to wear face masks in public to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. In cities like Shanghai, for example, face masks were compulsory for all subway passengers.

Currently, most of the Chinese mainland is classified as low-risk. Exceptions include several districts in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin, where infection clusters were recently detected, as well as a district in the central city of Wuhan, the site of the first outbreak. (Image: People Visual)