China's Messy Exit from Covid Zero

China is warning it faces a steep surge in Covid cases as the country rapidly dismantles pandemic controls and embraces a faster reopening than some experts had expected. Bloomberg's Rachel Chang and Allen Wan look back at how China’s Covid Zero fell apart after 3 years.

The sudden move away from Covid Zero has left many people bewildered and a surge in infections is “surely unavoidable,” Zhang Wenhong, one of China’s top Covid advisers, wrote in an opinion piece published by Caixin on Tuesday. The country will likely see a large initial peak, followed by significantly weaker second and third waves, he wrote, citing the experience of other countries.

The comments come after China scrapped almost all of its internal virus curbs last week, in a sudden U-turn that leaves only strict border controls as the last vestige of the Covid Zero policy that isolated the country for three years.

The swift reopening has surprised many China watchers and stoked concerns that the world’s second-biggest economy faces a rough road ahead as officials haven’t put in place measures to deal with the inevitable squeeze on the health-care system that comes from soaring cases and fatalities, particularly among the vast nation’s under-vaccinated elderly.

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