By Ryan Woo, Martin Quin Pollard&nbsp;and&nbsp;Josh Horwitz
BEIJING&nbsp;(Reuters) -Judging&nbsp;by&nbsp;Friday's&nbsp;quiet&nbsp;streets&nbsp;in&nbsp;China's&nbsp;capital&nbsp;Beijing&nbsp;and&nbsp;the&nbsp;reluctance&nbsp;of&nbsp;some&nbsp;businesses&nbsp;to&nbsp;drop&nbsp;COVID&nbsp;curbs,&nbsp;enduring&nbsp;anxieties&nbsp;about&nbsp;the&nbsp;coronavirus&nbsp;are&nbsp;likely&nbsp;to&nbsp;hamper&nbsp;a&nbsp;speedy&nbsp;return&nbsp;to&nbsp;health&nbsp;for the&nbsp;world's&nbsp;second-largest&nbsp;economy.
Although the government on Wednesday loosened key parts of its strict "zero-COVID" policy that has kept the pandemic largely at bay for the past three years, many people appear wary of being too quick to shake off the shackles.
In the central city of Wuhan, where the new&nbsp;coronavirus&nbsp;erupted in late 2019, there were more signs of life with&nbsp;some&nbsp;areas busy with commuters on Friday. But residents say a&nbsp;return&nbsp;to normal is a long way off.
"They've relaxed the measures but still there's nobody&nbsp;about," said a taxi driver surnamed Wang, who didn't want to give his full name.
"You see these roads, these&nbsp;streets&nbsp;... they ought to be, busy, full of people. But there's no one. It's dead out here."
Yet China has been anything but placid during the past few weeks, with protests against&nbsp;COVID&nbsp;curbs&nbsp;in many cities that marked the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago.
Some&nbsp;of those protesters, tracked down by&nbsp;China's&nbsp;security apparatus, now face an anxious wait&nbsp;about&nbsp;their fate.
CHANGING MIND-SET
Little more than a month after the National&nbsp;Health&nbsp;Commission stressed commitment to its strict virus containment policy, saying it was "putting people&nbsp;and&nbsp;lives first", authorities have changed tack&nbsp;and&nbsp;are now telling people they have less to fear.
The commission announced on Friday that they will convert temporary facilities used for treating&nbsp;COVID&nbsp;patients into permanent hospitals to boost treatment efforts.
Zhong Nanshan, a prominent Chinese epidemiologist, said that 99% of people now infected with the virus would recover in 7 to 10 days, in comments reported by the People's Daily, controlled by the ruling Communist Party.
But there are signs the reassuring new message has still to convince many of the country's 1.4 billion people.
With the need for tests&nbsp;dropped&nbsp;and&nbsp;most infected people now being allowed to isolate at home,&nbsp;some&nbsp;have embraced the new freedoms. For others, habits formed under months of stifling lockdowns, are proving hard to break.
On the&nbsp;Beijing&nbsp;subway, many seats were empty on Friday night during what should have been rush hour, even though the city this week scrapped the need to show negative tests to ride trains or enter offices.
Some&nbsp;downtown restaurants were deserted at lunchtime.
Amid the caution, state-broadcaster CCTV announced further easing, with tourism&nbsp;and&nbsp;entertainment venues - including theatres, libraries, internet cafes&nbsp;and&nbsp;table game centres no longer requiring&nbsp;COVID&nbsp;tests&nbsp;and&nbsp;health&nbsp;codes.
China's&nbsp;tally of 5,235&nbsp;COVID-related deaths is a tiny fraction of its population of 1.4 billion,&nbsp;and&nbsp;extremely low by global standards.&nbsp;Some&nbsp;experts have warned that toll could rise above 1.5 million if the exit is too hasty.
'CHAOS' AHEAD
Chinese regulators&nbsp;and&nbsp;state-owned banks are taking steps to split staff at their workplaces in&nbsp;Beijing, sources told Reuters, as&nbsp;businesses&nbsp;brace for a possible spike in&nbsp;COVID&nbsp;cases.
Manufacturers remain cautious too, retaining&nbsp;COVID&nbsp;curbs&nbsp;until they get a clearer picture of just how workplaces will be affected by the easing of stringent measures.
Businesses&nbsp;told Reuters they were expecting to have to grapple with long periods with workers off sick that could&nbsp;hamper&nbsp;operations, perhaps for months.
While authorities have scrapped testing as a pre-requisite for many activities, hotpot chain Haidilao said it would continue to require daily PCR tests for staff at its dine-in outlets in&nbsp;Beijing.
Analysts&nbsp;and&nbsp;business leaders expect&nbsp;China's&nbsp;economy&nbsp;to rebound late next year as it follows the rocky path trodden by the rest of the world to open up&nbsp;and&nbsp;try to live with the disease.
China's&nbsp;battered yuan currency climbed to a three-month high early on Friday&nbsp;and&nbsp;its stock markets rose as investors looked beyond poor data to growth prospects.
Noel Quinn, chief executive of HSBC, which makes the bulk of its revenue in the Greater China region, told a financial forum in Shanghai that&nbsp;China's&nbsp;new measures represented "meaningful progress".
"I very much hope that they can be an important stepping stone towards the full reopening of mainland&nbsp;China's&nbsp;borders as soon as practicable," he told the Shanghai Bund Summit via video link.
A surge in infections would&nbsp;likely&nbsp;depress economic growth in the next few months, however.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers warned that large-scale&nbsp;COVID&nbsp;infections would have an "adverse impact" on the auto market next year.
"There's going to be chaos," said Jeffrey Goldstein, a China-based consultant who helps foreign brands manufacture goods in Asia.
"China's&nbsp;three years behind, so what's going to happen in China is what happened in the rest of the world."
A Reuters poll forecast&nbsp;China's&nbsp;growth to slow to 3.2% in 2022, far below the official target of&nbsp;about&nbsp;5.5%, marking one of the worst performances in almost half a century.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo, Bernard Orr&nbsp;and&nbsp;the&nbsp;Beijing&nbsp;newsroom, Brenda Goh, Josh Horwitz&nbsp;and&nbsp;Jason Xue, Zoey Zhang in Shanghai, Martin Pollard in Wuhan&nbsp;and&nbsp;Selena Li in Hong Kong; Writing by John Geddie&nbsp;and&nbsp;Greg Torode; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Frank Jack Daniel&nbsp;and&nbsp;Raissa Kasolowsky)

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'It's dead out here': China's slow exit from zero-COVID