HONG KONG -- Cities across China are ignoring a government edict to ease COVID-19 restrictions as they struggle to contain a surge in infections, which smashed a daily case record Thursday.
Beijing this month announced it would relax a controversial zero-COVID strategy, but the rapid spread of highly infectious variants is putting local governments between a rock and a hard place as they scramble to balance those top-down orders against their own efforts to bring down cases while keeping their economies afloat.
