How much longer can China keep up its "zero COVID" strategy?

Inside China, some senior scientists and officials have also taken the political risk of calling for similar reopening, in recognition of a world where it seems Covid will become endemic. Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested recently that the country could be ready when vaccination rates pass 85%, perhaps early in 2022.

Others have joined scientists abroad, warning that even Beijing’s autocratic powers and popular support for lockdowns and other control measures may not be enough to keep highly transmissible new variants out.

“China will have great difficulty with Omicron and a zero Covid policy,” Tulio Oliveira, director of South Africa’s Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation, said on Twitter. He is part of the team that first alerted the World Health Organisation to the new variant.

“They may need to join the rest of the world with mitigation strategies. China should not punish its public health officials or citizens or foreigns because (of) a more transmissible variant.”