China’s lottery operations are finally resuming in the nation’s capital Beijing as efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 appear to be working.

This weekend, the Beijing Sports Lottery and Beijing Welfare Lottery announced that lottery sales would resume in the capital on Wednesday (6), bringing an end to the suspension of sales that began on January 22. The sales halt was originally intended to last only through the Lunar New Year holiday but was extended as the pandemic’s full impact became known.

Lottery sales in other Chinese provinces resumed on a limited basis in mid-March, and even Wuhan City – the original epicenter of the outbreak in Hubei province – was allowed to resume sales on April 8. But Beijing, home to 20m people and much of the nation’s top leadership (and foreign press), remained a dormant outlier.

Lottery officials began prepping Beijing retailers last week for the new rules of the game, including vigorous disinfection routines, limiting the number of customers able to enter shops, taking the temperatures of those who do and guiding customers through ‘non-contact’ sales processes.