As China starts dismantling 'zero-COVID' controls, fears of virus grow

As many Chinese embraced new freedoms on Thursday after the country dropped key parts of its tough zero-COVID regime, there was mounting concern that a virus, which had largely been kept in check, could soon run wild. Three years into the pandemic, many in China had been itching for Beijing to start to align its rigid virus prevention measures with the rest of the world, which has largely opened up in an effort to live with the disease. Those frustrations boiled over into widespread protests last month, the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power…