As Chinese authorities expand a policy shift toward reopening the economy and away from the country’s long-held, stringent “zero-Covid” policies, more Chinese provincial capitals are easing their Covid restrictions.

In the southwestern province of Yunnan, Kunming will eliminate the requirement to display a PCR test in order to ride the subway. Meanwhile in the Guangxi region, Nanning has eliminated similar testing requirements for all public settings except hotels and tourist destinations.

In the northeast, the capital of Heilongjiang, Harbin, has announced entering public spaces no longer requires a display of test results, and people leaving the city will only need to take one PCR test within 48 hours instead of two.

These smaller regional cities are following the lead of larger first-tier cities like Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, which have been easing such curbs in recent days. Following anti-lockdown protests, which spread as public anger of Covid restrictions grew, top government leaders have now signaled it is time to transition away from the stringent measures of the past.

On Saturday, China reported 30,869 new local Covid cases, a decrease from the previous day’s 32,206, according to official government data.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s chief China economist Hui Shan and colleagues wrote in a note that while the recent easing of Covid policies is not yet a full abandonment of the previous “zero-Covid” policies, “we see them as clear evidence of the Chinese government preparing for an exit, and trying to minimize the economic and social cost of Covid control in the meantime.”

They went on to note that in Hong Kong and Taiwan, reopening was associated with a skyrocketing of new cases, which aggressively reduced mobility. Goldman Sach’s primary scenario envisions China maintaining the zero-Covid policy until April of next year, as a means of allowing the country time to prepare for a full reopening.