The world’s most populous nation is being forced onto a zero-COVID off-ramp.
By Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic
“In China, a dam seems on the verge of breaking. Following a wave of protests, the government has begun to relax some of its most stringent zero-COVID protocols, and regional authorities have trimmed back a slew of requirements for mass testing, quarantine, and isolation. The rollbacks are coming as a relief for the many Chinese residents who have been clamoring for change. But they’re also swiftly tilting the nation toward a future that’s felt inevitable for nearly three years: a flood of infections—accompanied, perhaps, by an uncharted morass of disease and death. A rise in new cases has already begun to manifest in urban centers such as Chongqing, Beijing, and Guangzhou. Now experts are waiting to see just how serious China’s outbreak will be, and whether the country can cleanly extricate itself from the epidemic ahead.
“For now, the forecast “is full of ifs and buts and maybes,” says Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa. Perhaps the worst can be averted if the government does more to vaccinate the vulnerable and prep hospitals for a protracted influx of COVID patients; and if the community at large reinvests in a subset of mitigation measures as cases rise…”
