Introduction

Life is almost back to normal in much of China. Shops, restaurants, bars, and offices are open for business. Manufacturing activity is picking up. Traffic once again jams the highways of major cities. Three quarters of China's workforce was back on the job as of 24 March, according to one company’s estimate. Wuhan, where the COVID-19 pandemic originated, is lagging, as is the rest of Hubei province but even there, the lockdown is due to lift 8 April. China has done what few believed was possible: bring a blazing epidemic of a respiratory virus to a virtual standstill. On 18 March, the country reported zero locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 for the first time. Since then, only 6 of such infections have been reported, only one of them in Wuhan. Now, the key question is: Can China keep it that way?

Keywords

Epidemiology