HONG KONG/SHANGHAI — At the public hospital in Shanghai where Nora, a 30\u002Dyear\u002Dold doctor, works, tension has spiraled since China relaxed its stringent…
Patients quarrel with doctors to access drugs that are in short supply, like cough medicines and pain killers. Medics are overloaded; infected staff continue to work because of a scarcity of personnel.Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
More than a dozen global health experts, epidemiologists, residents and political analysts interviewed by Reuters identified the failure to vaccinate the elderly and communicate an exit strategy to the public, as well as excessive focus on eliminating the virus, as causes of the strain on China’s medical infrastructure.
State media has defended Beijing’s approach while recasting its messaging to emphasize the Omicron variant’s milder nature. In a review of China’s COVID-19 responses, the official Xinhua news agency said on Dec. 9 that Xi had “done right” by taking “resolute actions to curb the virus’ spreading.”Article contentAs the outbreak grows, official data on severe cases and mortality rates are unlikely to reflect the situation, experts including Mike Ryan, WHO’s emergencies director, have said.
“As we have seen in Hong Kong, unvaccinated older people are at particularly high risk of death and perhaps healthcare capacity in China will be overwhelmed by caseload demand soon,” said Hiroshi Nishiura, a member of Japan’s COVID task force. While China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention continually warned that a large-scale outbreak would have a devastating impact on the health system, the fixation on stamping out the virus strained medical resources.Article content
It is unclear how much went to building quarantine facilities or providing tests, but analysts’ estimates gathered by Reuters in May put China’s planned COVID-related spending this year at around $52 billion. In Hanchuan, in Hubei province, patients sat in their cars to receive IV fluids through vehicle windows, footage on Dec. 14 obtained by Reuters showed.
China has about 2 physicians per 1,000 people, versus 4.3 in Germany and 5.8 in Britain, according to the World Health Organisation. And it has 3.6 intensive-care beds per 100,000 people, compared with 34.7 in the United States, 29.2 in Germany and 12.5 in Italy, World Population Review data show.China had other imperatives for pursuing a strict zero-COVID approach this year, given the threat a large outbreak may have posed to key events.
When infections began to soar in recent weeks, it became clear the virus had overrun the zero-COVID defenses.
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