Why China’s new Covid crisis is all of its own making

• Fever medicine is in short supply, hospitals are swamped, the death toll is soaring among the elderly, and morgues are overwhelmed with bodies
• Beijing has had nearly three years to prepare for pandemic controls to be lifted and learn from other countries – so how has it messed this up?

Since Beijing’s sudden U-turn on ending the zero-Covid policy more than two weeks ago, Chinese officials and state media have struggled to put a positive spin on the decision.

They have argued that the draconian coronavirus controls – which have isolated the country from the rest of the world over the past three years – won the population of 1.4 billion valuable, life-saving time.

They have also tried to reshape public perception of the virus – until last month labelled serious and deadly in the official narrative to justify zero-Covid – by stressing that the latest Omicron variants may be highly contagious but the symptoms they cause are mild.