End of Covid Zero policy threatens to overwhelm China with infections

China faces a daunting task after abruptly giving up on Covid Zero, with infections set to surge and deaths predicted to top 2 million.
 

The world’s most populous nation is rapidly abandoning the mass testing, lockdowns and centralized quarantine that defined the stringent, three year-old policy. Yet, little time has been spent putting in place the mitigation measures needed to deal with the resulting explosion in cases, which could total 5.6 million a day at the peak, according to some estimates. 

Unlike the whack-a-mole pattern of the outbreaks that took place in the US and Europe over months and years,