Quick Take: Why COVID is Surging in China

After avoiding the worst impacts of the pandemic for the past two years, China is experiencing its most severe COVID-19 wave since the earliest days of the novel coronavirus. Many credit China’s aggressive pandemic controls and high vaccination rate, reported at nearly 80% of its population, for its success managing the disease. But those measures are not proving to be as effective against the highly infectious Omicron variant, says Wenhui Mao, Ph.D., senior policy associate in the Duke Global Health Institute's Center for Policy Impact in Global Health. In this short video interview, Mao explains how gaps in China’s vaccination efforts may be leaving room for the Omicron variant of the virus to spread.