Every three days Faith Wang, a podcast producer living in Beijing, waits in line for about 30 minutes to get a COVID PCR test.
With summer approaching and the weather getting hot, it's an uncomfortable, frustrating experience.
But as part of the Chinese government's "COVID-zero" policy, anyone in Beijing wanting to enter public premises including workplaces, shopping malls, restaurants and even residential complexes must have received a negative PCR result within the past 72 hours.
"This whole thing makes me feel very annoyed," Ms Wang said.
According to local media, at least 44 Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, have made regular COVID testing a mandatory part of leading a normal life, even though many of those places haven't had any recent COVID cases.
Tens of thousands of testing booths are being built so that residents have one within a 15-minute walk.
But Ms Wang said testing was still a hassle.
"Or a booth that is supposed to open at 9am, often opens at 10am or 11am instead."
Adding to her frustration are bugs in the system.
In China, everyone has to travel with COVID QR codes, which display different colours to show someone's health and testing status.
Once, Ms Wang's app did not update for four days after she did a test.
"I don't know why, there seems to be a delay in the system. I didn't go out during those days because of this, [although] at the time nothing was open [due to COVID restrictions]."
Meanwhile, the bugs have benefited some people.
Jolyn He, a freelance designer from Wuhan who refuses to take the tests, discovered when she went to hospital for a minor eye operation her app was stuck on green.
"Usually if you don't do the COVID tests, your code will be grey," she said.
"Maybe I am not in the system because I haven't done any tests [since the policy came out].
"So I can really go anywhere with this green code."
Testing in some cities 'very convenient'
Not everyone is down on the normalisation of testing.
Shenzhen resident Joy Tang, who is the director of a company specialising in brain imaging medical equipment, said getting tested in her city was "very convenient" and people rarely needed to wait in lines.
"There are a lot of testing places in Shenzhen," Ms Tang said.
"You can see them [the testing sites] on a mobile app, which will tell you the location and whether the spot is now busy or free."
However, she said getting tested in other cities that did not yet have the infrastructure was "way harder".
"In these cities, you can only get tested in hospitals ... so now I only stay one day in each city to avoid doing that," she said.
"I just don't want to travel outside [of Shenzhen] anymore."
Ms Tang thinks normalising COVID testing is a good policy.
"It makes me feel more safe, but I know it is a huge economic loss for the government," she said.
Costs and opportunities for the economy
Chinese economists estimate the mass testing regime could cost China 1.7 trillion yuan ($354 billion) per year.
Monash economics professor Shi Heling said that could be enough to help push China's economy into recession by the end of this year.
"Each test does not cost much, but don't forget China has so many people," Professor Shi said.
China's National Healthcare Security Administration recently announced that testing costs would be covered by local governments.
But while testing remains free in most cities, there have already been instances of citizens being required to pay about 3.5 yuan ($1) per test out of their own pockets.
Professor Shi said most local governments were already running budget deficits and would end up passing the costs on.
"In the end, I believe most provinces and cities will refuse to pay for this," he said.
Some economists have suggested the testing regime may actually have some economic benefits, creating employment and boosting businesses.
The owner of a company in Jiangsu which produces COVID testing booths, who wants to be known as Mr Du, told the ABC he was doing well out of the policy.
"We are selling about 30 to 40 [testing booths] a month ... the competition is quite fierce," he said.
Mr Du said each booth cost about 20,000 yuan ($4,160) and "there is continuous demand".
But Professor Shi said while normalising COVID testing might create demand for testing facilities and jobs for testers, it was not sensible to rely on it to develop China's economy.
"This may seem to add some numbers to the GDP, but it is meaningless," he said.
"The most important thing for the economy is to benefit the people, and to drive the economy with COVID tests is a waste of money and time."
Widespread testing 'only way' to achieve COVID-zero
George Liu, a public health expert at La Trobe University, said frequent and mass PCR testing may be China's "only way" to achieve its COVID-zero policy because the Omicron variant was so transmissible.
He said China was now in a "very difficult position" because if Beijing abandoned the policy without increasing the vaccination rate, the consequences could be disastrous.
"The biggest problem will be [low] vaccination [among the elderly]," he said.
Increasing vaccination rates should come with a plan to transition out of COVID-zero, he added.
"It doesn't make sense to boost the vaccination without transitioning towards that stage [of living with the virus]," he said.
"We all know that immunity will wane over time. If you give vaccine boosters to the elderly population right now, and then you transition to living with the virus a year later, that will not give those people good protection."
