How China Looks to Be Easing Its Covid Zero Strategy

President Xi Jinping’s insistence on adhering to a so-called Covid Zero policy isolated China as other countries that suffered far-worse outbreaks returned to a semblance of pre-pandemic life. Three years after the first documented case, the country has significantly loosened its stringent regime, which has undoubtedly saved lives but also weighed heavily on the economy and fueled protests in several major cities. The abrupt about-turn — during winter and with an under-vaccinated elderly population — raised concerns about the risks of a devastating outbreak.

When SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, first emerged in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan, the Chinese government viewed it as a public health threat that had to be eliminated at all costs. Authorities required isolation for patients and their close contacts, as well as quarantine for anyone arriving from abroad. Any outbreak domestically was met with a barrage of targeted testing, contact tracing and quarantines to try to nip it in the bud, with citywide lockdowns sometimes imposed when there were fewer than a hundred cases. The approach, which became known as “dynamic clearing” or dynamic Covid Zero, acknowledged that infections would occur but aimed to stop onward transmission. That goal became more elusive with the emergence of more infectious variants of the virus.