Urumqi and other cities over the weekend

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Rare protests broke out against Covid lockdowns in Beijing, Shanghai, . Nearly three years after the virus first emerged in Wuhan, China is still imposing strict social controls to quash Covid outbreaks, while countries such as the U.S. have largely returned to normal life.


“We’ve said that zero COVID is not a policy we pursuing here in the United States,” the NSC spokesperson said. “And as we’ve said, we think it’s going to be very difficult for the People’s Republic of China to be able to contain this virus through their zero COVID strategy.”

The U.S. Covid response is focused on increasing vaccination rates and making testing and treatment more accessible, the spokesperson said.

China’s stringent Covid controls have kept deaths very low telegram database compared to the U.S., but the measures have also deeply disrupted economic and social life. In China, more than 30,000 people have died from Covid since the pandemic began, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., more than 1 million people have died.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S., said China’s approach to Covid “doesn’t make public health sense.” Vaccination rates among the elderly, one of the groups most vulnerable to Covid, are low in China compared to other countries. The vaccination campaign in China focused on people in critical positions first, those ages 18 to 59 next, and only then people ages 60 and over.

“If you look at the prevalence of vaccinations among the elderly, that it was almost counterproductive, the people you really needed to protect were not getting protected,” Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. A temporary lockdown might make sense if the goal was to buy time to boost vaccination rates but China doesn’t seem to be doing that, he said.