Blog: Beijing Won’t Be China’s Last Covid-19 Flare Up. We Have to Be Prepared

Yang Gonghuan is a former deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese CDC, said in a recent interview that Beijing’s latest Covid-19 outbreak was “unexpected.”

I don’t think so. It isn’t a surprise that China is not immune to the global pandemic — we need to acknowledge this. It is impossible to guard against the new coronavirus effectively because you can’t just shut down the economy and prevent people from moving around. Thus before a vaccine becomes available, there will be some isolated outbreaks that we need to prepare for.