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Photo Credit: Siyi Chu (褚司怡)
SOCIETY

Photographing the Remnants of “Zero Covid”

After the sudden end of China’s “dynamic zero” Covid policy, photographers capture the lingering relics of the country’s pandemic prevention apparatus

As China‘s “dynamic zero” Covid policy came to an abrupt end around December last year, the infrastructure of pandemic prevention also began to crumble. Nucleic acid testing booths were empty, hazmat suits discarded, QR codes to enter public areas torn up or left to fade. With every passing day, it seemed, the vestiges of tracking and containing the virus that had become part of everyday life over the past three years (the temperature checks, the health code apps, the cotton swabs), became consigned to memory.

But as the country’s Covid policies evolve, and the physical reminders of the pandemic slowly disappear, traces of three years of battling the virus remain. Some of these relics of “zero Covid” are captured here on camera:

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