End of ‘zero-COVID’ threatens to overwhelm China with infections

China faces a daunting task after abruptly giving up on “zero-COVID,” with infections set to surge and deaths predicted to top 2 million.

The world’s most populous nation is rapidly abandoning the mass testing, lockdowns and centralized quarantine that defined the three-year old policy. Little time has been spent putting in place mitigation measures to deal with the resulting increase in cases, which could total 5.6 million a day at the peak, according to some estimates.

Unlike the whack-a-mole pattern of outbreaks that took place in the U.S. and Europe over months and years, China is likely to see a wave of infections engulf the country all at once in a population that until now has largely avoided exposure to the virus.