China abandons zero-COVID
Three years of the world's strictest controls end within weeks of the protests against them.
- When
- Known to
- ± 12 hours
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
- Where
- Beijing, China · 39.9042° N, 116.4074° E
After the November 2022 'white paper' protests — the widest public dissent since 1989, triggered by a locked-down apartment fire in Urumqi — China dismantled testing, quarantine and travel restrictions in early December. Infection then swept a population with little natural immunity and an under-vaccinated elderly cohort; independent estimates put excess deaths in the following months between one and two million.