【明報專訊】Last Wednesday, different parts of China began to announce the lifting of lockdowns one after another. While tens of thousands of people under excessive quarantine welcomed the regaining of their freedom, there was also a new wave of confusions and worries. These included the difficulty of finding nucleic acid testing sites and the areas where the relaxation did not take place as expected. However, compared with the huge chaos previously, the confusion at hand is only transitional. As for the worry that the relaxation will result in a rebound of the pandemic, the fact that the number of infections has dropped from 40,000 per day to over 30,000 for six consecutive days means that there is cause for cautious optimism. The new normal of chaos transitioning to order necessitates the re-establishment of a set of systems for dealing with the post-pandemic period and after the pandemic ends so as to prepare for the full return to normal.