A healthcare worker puts on PPE as she stands next to people waiting in line outside a fever clinic in Beijing, China, December 9, 2022.
Kevin Fryer | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Faced with a surge in Covid-19 cases, China is looking to set up more intensive care units and beef up its hospitals. Beijing is rolling back antivirus controls that have kept millions of people at home, crushing economic growth and sparking protests.
President Xi Jinping’s government is officially committed to thwarting the last attempt by major powers to spread the virus. But recent moves suggest the ruling Communist Party will tolerate more cases without quarantines or shutdowns of travel and businesses amid a scaled-down “Corona Zero” strategy.
A cabinet meeting on Thursday called for a “full mobilization” of hospitals, including adding staff and increasing supplies of medicines to ensure their “combat effectiveness,” according to state media. Authorities have been told to track the health of everyone in the community over the age of 65.
It’s not clear how much the number of cases has increased since Beijing ended compulsory testing last week in many areas at a frequency of once-a-day. However, according to interviews and social media accounts, outbreaks have occurred in businesses and schools across the country.
A virus testing site in Beijing’s Runfeng Shuishang district has been shut down after all its employees were infected, the neighborhood government said on its social media accounts on Saturday. “Please wait for a while,” he said.
Although the official number of cases is down, it does not cover much of the population as compulsory testing ended in many areas on Wednesday. It’s part of a dramatic shift, confirming that Beijing is ending travel and other restrictions and gradually joining the US and other governments in trying to coexist with the virus.
On Sunday, the government reported 10,815 new cases, including 8,477 asymptomatic. This was essentially a quarter of the previous week’s peak of more than 40,000 per day, which was the number of people tested after being hospitalized or for work in schools or other high-risk locations. It represents people only.
Western Shaanxi province has set aside 22,000 hospital beds for Covid-19 and is ready to boost its intensive care capacity by 20% by converting other beds, Shanghai reports The agency The Paper reported, citing Yun Chunfu, an official with the provincial health committee. Yun said the city is “accelerating upgrades” of hospitals for “critically ill patients.”
“Each city needs to designate hospitals with high comprehensive capabilities and high standards of treatment,” Yu said at a press conference.
China has 138,000 intensive care beds, Jiao Yahui, director general of the National Health Commission’s Medical Administration Bureau, said at a news conference on Friday. That’s less than 1 him in 10,000.
Medical resources are distributed unevenly. Hospital beds are concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities on the prosperous East Coast. A cabinet statement on Thursday told authorities to ensure “fair access” to treatment and medicines in rural areas.
China’s restrictions have kept infection rates low, but have crushed already sluggish economic growth and sparked dissatisfaction with rising human casualties. The official death toll is her 5,235, and the U.S. death toll is her 1.1 million.
China’s official total number of cases, 363,072, is almost 50% higher than the level on 1 October after the nationwide outbreak.
Protests erupted on November 25 after 10 people died in Urumqi in the northwest. Internet users asked if firefighters and people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other virus protection. Authorities denied it, but the disaster became the focus of public outrage.
The Xi administration promised to cut costs and disruptions after the economy contracted 2.6% from the previous quarter in the three months to June. That was after Shanghai and other industrial centers were shut down for up to two months to fight the outbreak.
Forecasters say the economy is likely to contract this quarter. Imports in November fell 10.9% year-on-year, indicating weak demand. Some forecasters have cut their annual growth forecast to less than 3%. That’s less than half of his strong 8.1% growth last year.
It’s not clear if any of the changes were in response to the protests.
In a show of official confidence, the second-largest leader, Premier Li Keqiang, was shown by state media to meet without masks with leaders of the International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions in the eastern city of Huangshan last week. it was done. Earlier, Xi skipped a photo session with Russian and Central Asian leaders at a summit in Uzbekistan in September.
Still, health experts and economists say millions of seniors will need to be vaccinated before the restrictions that keep most travelers out of China are lifted, so at least mid-2023. The government last week launched a campaign to vaccinate the elderly, but the process could take months.
Experts warn the ruling party could still impose restrictions again if it changes course and fears hospitals will be overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, experts cited by state media called on the public to ease the burden on hospitals by treating mild Covid-19 cases at home and deferring treatment for less serious problems.
Patients line up for up to six hours to enter a fever clinic. Some hospitals are denying patients deemed not serious enough to require urgent care, according to social media accounts.
“Blindly going to the hospital” can deplete resources and delay treatment of serious cases, “leading to serious risks,” Erzhen Chen, deputy director of Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, told The Paper. Told.
“I encourage you to take care of your health at home,” Chen said. “Leave medical resources for those who really need it.”
