We got this rejection today:
"Regarding guideline 5.1.1, Since the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis, services and information related to it are considered to be part of the healthcare industry. In addition, the seller and company names associated with your app are not from a recognized institution, such as a governmental entity, hospital, insurance company, non-governmental organization, or university.
Per section 5.1.1 (ix) of the App Store Review Guidelines, apps that provide services or collect sensitive user information in highly-regulated fields, such as healthcare, should be submitted by a legal entity that provides these services, and not by an individual developer."
For our app Pandaist - which is a Chinese language learning app.
The app does have a few COVID-related stories, but it isn't specifically about COVID - it's just standard news stories. It doesn't provide any services about COVID.
I see other companies not fitting this profile, like the BBC, Fox News, and the AP have COVID stories in their apps.
Do we just have to remove all COVID-related content whatsoever?