Protesters in China have demanded an end to the country’s strict pandemic approach. Experts say that could invite a public health crisis
It’s no wonder some Chinese people have expressed frustrations with zero-COVID. But experts suggest that ending the strategy now would invite a public health crisis. Focusing on containment for so long distracted the country from increasing vaccination rates—especially among its vulnerable elderly—and from investing in necessary healthcare infrastructure. Prolonged isolation has also stunted the population’s herd immunity.
Donald Low, a public policy professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, describes this to TIME as one of the “great tragedies” of zero-COVID: “It led to a severe misallocation of resources and preparation of the things that they needed to do when they finally decided to transition out.”
Maintaining zero-COVID, however, not only threatens further damage to the lives and livelihoods of China’s 1.4 billion people, but it also risks undermining Xi’s legacy as public discontent festers. Observers believe any choice Beijing makes on handling COVID-19 moving forward may be headed for disaster. Says Low: “They created this trap for themselves.”Should zero-COVID be lifted, rather than live with the virus,could die from it.
Most residents in China are vaccinated with one of two homegrown COVID-19 vaccines using an inactivated form of the virus—one developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech and the other by state-owned Sinopharm.
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