Welcome to Season 5 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore, Maryland.

Our goal with this podcast is to bring scientific evidence and experience to shed light on critical

health issues. If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health

question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jhhut.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call, and today we're looking at the

COVID-19 crisis currently roiling China and Hong Kong. Cases and deaths there are the highest

they've been since the start of the

pandemic more than two years ago. Stephanie Desmond talks to Yan Joam Huang from the Council

of Foreign Relations and Seton Hall University. Let's listen. Yan Jiam Huang, thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Stephanie. So you are an expert in China and Hong Kong and public health,

and you're the perfect person to have today because we keep hearing of a big surge of COVID cases in that part of the world.

So China was first to recognize COVID-19 more than two years ago. Why is this happening now?

Well, I think that is a good question, right?

I think in part, right, you know, China is now experiencing this Omicron wave,

like later than many other countries because it's strict zero COVID strategy that shielded the population

from this new highly transmissible, you know, an Omicron wave.

But we know what this is so highly transmissible, even the best defense cannot prevent the virus from infiltrating

Chinese borders.

So it finally arrived in the mainland China in early March.

So now we are seeing the largest outbreak since the Wuhan outbreak in early 2020.

Talk to those of us who don't know what the zero COVID strategy is.

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