Shanghai Lockdown: Is Chinas Zero COVID strategy beginning to backfire? | In Focus
b'At a time when most parts of the world are easing COVID restrictions and even mask mandates, Shanghai is in the middle of a brutal lockdown. There have been reports of a sharp spike in the number of cases, although reported deaths are and restricted to the very old. Shanghai\\u2019s 25 million residents seem to be increasingly fed up with the government\\u2019s \\u2018Zero COVID\\u2019 policy, which has caused supply chain bottle necks resulting in shortages of food and other essentials, and denial of medical care for patients with non-COVID illnesses. There have also been reports of little children getting separated from parents forcibly sent away to quarantine shelters.\\nUntil this March, there was a general sense that China had managed the pandemic way better than the West, especially when viewed in terms of the total case load and mortality numbers. So how did thing things get out of hand all of a sudden? Is it a case of the \\u2018Zero COVID\\u2019 strategy backfiring? Is it the Omicron variant? Given that President Xi Jinping has taken personal ownership of the \\u2018Zero COVID\\u2019 strategy, is China likely to make a course correction in view of the economic fallout and public disenchantment with the stringent lockdown measures?\\nGuest: Ananth Krishnan, China Correspondent, The Hindu\\nHost: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor,\\xa0The Hindu\\nEdited by Ranjani Srinivasan'