Experts See China Stuck in a Slowly Evolving Covid-Zero Loop
A wave of omicron infections is testing the world’s most stringent containment regime.
A medical worker takes a swab sample during a home visit in Shenyang, China, on March 23.
Photographer: AFP/Getty Images
After conquering Covid-19 for almost two years with a zero-tolerance approach, China is now in the midst of its worst wave since the initial outbreak in Wuhan. Having breached what’s arguably the world’s toughest containment regime, omicron — the most infectious coronavirus variant — is starting to test Beijing’s Covid Zero resolve.
Despite President Xi Jinping’s call mid-March to limit the economic and social fallout of virus elimination, large-scale lockdowns and mass testing drives are back. Authorities are tweaking rules, however, to make some of the measures more flexible, targeted and nimble to avoid severe manufacturing disruptions. Still, the last Covid Zero holdout isn’t in a hurry to abandon the policy, even as the rest of the world moves to treating it as endemic.