Months after China was hailed as a success story in curbing the coronavirus, the country is facing its biggest challenge since the virus first emerged in Wuhan: The highly infectious Delta variant is now rapidly spreading.
The government has resorted to strict lockdowns and aggressive testing, even barring people in some cities from leaving their homes, but Chinese officials have acknowledged that stamping out this outbreak will be much harder than in the past. So far, the virus has spread to 15 of the 31 provinces and autonomous regions in China.
Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said China’s “containment-based” strategy would not work in the long run, particularly as new variants continued to emerge. “It will become extremely costly to sustain such an approach,” he said.
