BEIJING (AP) — More Chinese cities eased anti-virus restrictions and police patrolled their streets Thursday as the government tried to defuse public anger over some of the world’s most stringent COVID measures and head off more protests.

A newspaper reported Beijing, the capital, has begun allowing some people with the virus to isolate at home, avoiding crowded quarantine centers that have prompted complaints.

But many of the rules that brought people into the streets of Shanghai, Beijing and at least six other cities remain in force.

The industrial centers of Shenyang and Harbin in the northeast announced that students who attend school online and other people who have minimal interaction with others would no longer be required to take virus tests that have been administered as often as once a day.

In Beijing, some neighborhoods have begun allowing people with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 cases to isolate at home, the newspaper Yicai reported on its website.

The report gave no details, but a post on the social media account of the district government of Gaobeidian on Thursday said people there who test positive can stay at home.

Washington is watching the “very heavy security” in Beijing and other cities with “great care and great attention,” Ambassador Nicholas Burns said in an online appearance to an audience in Chicago.

The government says it is making restrictions more targeted and flexible, but a spike in infections since October has prompted local officials who are threatened with the loss of their jobs if an outbreak occurs to impose controls that some residents say are excessive and destructive