China has reduced testing and stopped reporting most mild COVID cases. China is among a few countries that managed to stop most domestic transmission of the virus in 2020, but it’s the last to end restrictions.
Nearly three years after the coronavirus was first identified in China and an unyielding "zero-COVID" approach, it is now spreading through the country after an abrupt reopening on Dec. 7 caught the nation under-vaccinated and short on hospital capacity. Experts have forecasted between a million and 2 million deaths next year.