Sluggish exit from zero-Covid

It’s over: Health workers carrying barricades inside a residential community after the end of a Covid-19 lockdown in Beijing. — AFP

JUDGING by the quiet streets in China’s capital Beijing and the reluctance of some businesses to drop Covid-19 curbs, enduring anxieties about the coronavirus are likely to hamper a speedy return to health for the world’s second-largest economy.

Although the government on Wednesday loosened key parts of its strict “zero-Covid” policy that has kept the pandemic largely at bay for the past three years, many people appear wary of being too quick to shake off the shackles.