Welcome to our weekly newsletter highlighting the best of The Economist’s coverage of the covid-19 pandemic and its effects.
 

Shanghai’s strict lockdown to curb an outbreak of covid is finally easing. But China is far from reaching its zero-covid goals. Fresh outbreaks are reported in Beijing and Tianjin. Our cover leader this week explains how President Xi Jinping is damaging China’s prosperity, partly through his insistence on eradicating an ineradicable virus. But even as tensions mount over his covid policies, there is little sign of real challenges to Mr Xi’s rule.

Britain’s prime minister should be more concerned about his fate. A highly anticipated report into parties held by the government during covid lockdowns was at last released this week. Our Britain section offers an assessment of the Sue Gray report. 

We strike a more optimistic tone on the EU’s covid recovery fund. We believe the Next Generation EU (or NGEU for short) will be a test of how the EU could operate in the future. Implementing the current plan is only part of it. Another issue is whether the fund can be adjusted to tackle today’s most pressing issues, such as the war in Ukraine. 

And in a By Invitation on health care, Sir John Bell argues that there is a need for better identification and tracking of pathogens that cause disease outbreaks. He calls for improved genomic surveillance and sequencing to help thwart pandemics.