China is at a crossroads on how to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Credit: Andrii Makukha, Creative Commons
Covid-19 may have gotten its start in China, but the country seemed to be the first to contain it. Whether China can maintain that edge, though, is another question.
After months of successfully controlling the spread of Covid-19 in China, the virus has suddenly resurfaced in the northern part of the country — in Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, and even in Beijing, necessitating a complete lockdown in nearby Shijiazhuang. Given the ongoing success of Chinese quarantine policies, these outbreaks will likely come under control in the coming weeks. But as the rest of the world inoculates against Covid-19, China faces a difficult choice between launching a mandatory inoculation campaign and continuing its quarantine from the world. Both scenarios will lead to heightened risks of limited outbreaks in China for months or even years to come even as other major economies obtain herd immunity from vaccination.
It’s a surprising turnabout. For much of the past year, as the worl
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