In Depth: As Mass Covid Testing Becomes China’s New Normal, Debate Grows Over Who Pays

As China’s local governments rack up billions of yuan of health care costs to implement the country’s dynamic “zero-Covid” policy, including mass testing and vaccination campaigns, a debate is growing about where the money is coming from to pay for it all.

Testing to root out chains of transmission has been one of the government’s main weapons to fight the nation’s worst Covid-19 outbreak since early 2020. Cities where flare-ups occur require all residents to undergo nucleic acid tests, also known as PCR tests, usually every 48 hours, in order to quarantine those infected and their close contacts and to stop the virus spreading.