New Covid Wave in China Hits Sellers of ‘Quarantine Insurance’

In a country where one person inadvertently crossing paths with a Covid-19 patient can instantly put an entire apartment complex under lockdown for 14 days or more, Chinese insurers last year began offering what they called “quarantine insurance”—get locked down, receive a payout. Now, as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads rapidly across the country, overwhelmed insurers are pulling the plug on the products. On Thursday, China’s Public Mutual Insurance Corp. will become the latest insurer to close itself off to new premium holders, following in the footsteps of ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance Co., which stopped selling quarantine insurance on Monday. ZhongAn is an online insurer started by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma, Tencent Holdings Ltd. chairman Pony Ma and Ping An Insurance Group Co. chairman Ma Mingzhe. The disappearance of the new policies reflects the speed with which new infections have swept across a country that has kept daily case counts low since the initial outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020.