{"id":50853,"date":"2022-12-04T16:00:07","date_gmt":"2022-12-04T07:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/dec\/04\/fears-of-deadly-infection-surge-as-china-abandons-zero-covid-policy"},"modified":"2022-12-04T16:00:07","modified_gmt":"2022-12-04T07:00:07","slug":"fears-of-deadly-infection-surge-as-china-abandons-zero-covid-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=50853","title":{"rendered":"Fears of deadly infection surge as China abandons zero-Covid policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dramatic U-turn following widespread unrest leaves country ill-prepared for Omicron<\/p>\n<p>The portable PCR testing booth dangled in the air over a dark Beijing street, captured on camera as it was winched away by a crane in the middle of the night. The image spread rapidly across Chinese social media, the perfect symbol of the bewilderingly rapid end of a draconian era.<\/p>\n<p>In the face of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/nov\/28\/china-protests-explained-why-are-people-demonstrating-blank-piece-white-paper-a4-what-will-happen-next-zero-covid-policy-protest\" title=\"\">most widespread national protests <\/a>since the bloody crackdown on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/tiananmen-square-protests-1989\" title=\"\">Tiananmen Square demonstrators in 1989<\/a>, the Chinese government has abruptly abandoned its flagship <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/nov\/29\/china-zero-covid-policy-explained-30-seconds-lockdowns-outbreaks\" title=\"\">zero-Covid policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/dec\/04\/fears-of-deadly-infection-surge-as-china-abandons-zero-covid-policy\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dramatic U-turn following widespread unrest leaves country ill-prepared for OmicronThe portable PCR testing booth dangled in the air over a dark Beijing street, captured on camera as it was winched away by a crane in the middle of the night. The image &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,1066,2458,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-coronavirus","category-omicron-variant","category-world-news","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50854,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50853\/revisions\/50854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}