The coronavirus pandemic appears to have come full circle, as China — where the virus emerged in late 2019 — now battles to contain a dramatic surge in cases. The country had followed versions of a strict zero-Covid policy for the best part of three years, routinely placing entire towns and neighbourhoods under lockdown if they reported any infections, even as the rest of the world opened up. China was also an early leader in vaccinations against the disease but relied on homegrown shots developed by more traditional methods that use an inactivated virus. Such vaccines are safer but are less effective than those developed in the West that use a living virus. Even though a lack of transparency has led to doubts about whether China’s official numbers can be trusted, there is little doubt that the country avoided deaths and devastation on the scale that India, for instance, suffered in the summer of 2021, at least until now. However, those successes also appear to have led to hubris among China’s leadership, with the country frequently touting its successes against the virus, perhaps without adequately reflecting on the limitations of its approach.

Forced by an angry and frustrated population to finally open up its biggest cities and loosen restrictions on movement, China is now struggling to cope with a sharp rise in cases and, possibly, in deaths. Hospitals and drug stores are swamped. This has serious consequences for the rest of the world. China is a major source of pharmacological ingredients used by drug manufacturers in India and other countries. If it limits their exports to support increased domestic needs, that could impact the global pharma industry. Chinese Covid-19 vaccines have been used widely in Africa and Latin America. The surge in China suggests that protection from those vaccines might have waned for those who took them months ago in other parts of the world. A subvariant of the virus that appears to be spreading in China has also been detected in India — where too, Covaxin has been made using an inactivated virus, and so has lower efficacy. Yet this moment also presents an opportunity that was missed in 2020: a chance for collaboration instead of nationalism. If China chooses to be more transparent, and the West and India respond positively, the world could be saved from the tragedy of reliving the past three years.