Huge human toll is feared as zero-Covid controls dismantled in China

Beijing’s abrupt dismantling of zero-Covid controls has been welcomed by economists, even as the country braces itself for the human impact of letting the disease spread through a vulnerable population, media reports said. The leadership’s abrupt U-turn on how it handles the pandemic appears to have been triggered by protests against controls that began last month, a nationwide show of discontent on a scale China had not seen in decades, The Guardian reported. Nearly one in five young people in cities are unemployed. Small and medium businesses have been particularly badly hit by the uncertainty, and the impact of unpredictable and often long-lasting shutdowns of entire cities. But almost no one has been exempt. The founder of Foxconn, a key Apple supplier, had warned Beijing that controls threatened China’s place in the global supply chain, the Wall Street Journal reported. The IMF’s Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, welcomed the “decisive” steps by Chinese authorities in “recalibrating Covid policies”, and said they could boost the regional international economy. “This can be very good for the Chinese people and economy, and also good for Asia and the world economy,” she said after a summit in China’s eastern Huangshan city. Premier Li Keqiang, who hosted the discussions, had conspicuously abandoned masks and social distancing, The Guardian reported. On social media, public information videos showed smiling men and women taking off the face coverings that have been compulsory for years. It was a whiplash-inducing reversal from years of messaging that the only way to stay safe was to avoid Covid, through extreme lockdown measures if necessary. For years, an increasingly fierce system of controls held increasingly infectious strains of disease at bay. Medical experts say that was a wasted window of opportunity to protect the population and prepare the healthcare system for a wave of sick patients, The Guardian reported.