In December, China abruptly abandoned its draconian “Zero Covid” policies, battered by a surge of infections and rising public anger against lockdowns. Half a year on, Covid cases again are on the rise, but this time the nation appears to be determined to press on with normal life as the government focuses on reigniting economic growth.
Though other countries have long settled into such a pattern, it is a shift for China. Until late last year, its national leadership was still ready to lock down whole neighborhoods and districts, even cities, in a bid to stamp out what were sometimes just small clusters of cases.
The Chinese health authorities have reported a rise in Covid cases since April, especially from newer subvariants that are spreading across the world. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent doctor who was among the first to openly confirm in early 2020 that Covid could easily spread among people, estimated on Monday that by late June as many as 65 million people a week could become infected with the coronavirus across China. (That would be up from what he estimated at 40 million infections a week in late May. China no longer publishes regular official nationwide estimates of infections.)
By comparison, after “Zero Covid” controls were set aside in December, new infections reached 37 million a day in China at their peak, according to estimates cited by Bloomberg. Even if, as Dr. Zhong acknowledged, the pace of rising infections is laden with uncertainty, a rebound in cases was always likely, and many in China appear steeled to living with a background hum of Covid infections, and sometimes Covid deaths.
“People have become used to infections, and they see this as normal in the post-Covid era,” Lin Zixian, 36, who works for a technology company in Beijing, said in a telephone interview. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, still often wears a medical mask when he meets people indoors. But Mr. Lin said that he and other members of his family had stopped masking in most public spaces, as have many people in China.
“Many of my friends got infected last year and got infected again this year,” Mr. Lin said. “Personally, I’m pretty calm about the virus and pandemic.”