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WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong and Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health, Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, New Territories, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China.
China’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented. In influenza-pandemic-preparedness plans, which guided the response to COVID-19, containment is rarely thought of as a sustainable strategy but is instead an initial approach to buy time for assessment and preparation. In China, a containment approach was introduced in Wuhan, the epicenter of initial cases, and this was subsequently extended to the entire country. It worked for almost 3 years, but now that containment measures have ended, as of 7 December 2022, a surge in cases of COVID-19 poses a major public health threat this winter.
