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Reuters
Reuters
Health

Here to stay? China's cityscapes transformed by thousands of COVID test booths

FILE PHOTO: People line up to get a swab at a nucleic acid testing station, set up city-wide to trace possible coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreaks in Beijing, China, September 8, 2022. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

A thousand days since the World Health Organization (WHO) was told of a "viral pneumonia" in central China, many countries have returned to pre-COVID-19 life. Not so China itself - in cities big or small, routine PCR testing is the new normal.

On Dec. 31, 2019, the WHO's office in China was informed of cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause in the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province. Since then, the virus that is now known as SARS-CoV-2 has evolved into the less virulent Omicron variant, and most of the world has moved on.

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