WHO says China’s zero-COVID strategy unsustainable

Beijing's streets have emptied as the government imposes varying lockdown measures to stamp out the coronavirus [Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters]

China’s zero-COVID strategy to defeat the pandemic is not sustainable, the head of the World Health Organization has said, in a rare public criticism by the UN agency on a government’s handling of the coronavirus.

Draconian measures have trapped most of Shanghai’s 25 million people at home for weeks as China tries to stamp out the country’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began.