With no exit strategy from ‘zero Covid’ policy, China could face tsunami in cases, experts fear

With no exit strategy from 'zero Covid' policy, China could face tsunami in cases, experts fear As the world watches the rare spectacle of protesters challenging China’s authoritarian leadership over its increasingly perplexing zero Covid policy, people who study the disease see threats ahead for China — and beyond. Helen Branswell STAT

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The zero Covid policy, which has kept cases and deaths in China to negligible numbers throughout the pandemic, seems doomed to fail in the face of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they believe. But the Chinese leadership does not appear to be mapping a path to a safe exit ramp, leaving experts worried the country could see a tsunami of cases that would swamp its health care system if the national containment effort collapses.

“I think they’re very poorly prepared and based on what we have seen in Hong Kong — which is probably the best proxy for what might happen in China — this could be fairly devastating,” Francois Balloux, director of the University College London’s Genetics Institute, told STAT in an interview.

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