Different Chinese health experts pointed out that there are several reasons that have led to an increase in severe COVID cases in Beijing and highlighted that the north of the country, where the capital is, usually registers more respiratory infections in winter.
In recent weeks, after China relaxes ‘zero COVID’ policy in favor of a strategy of coexistence with the virus, the Chinese capital suffered a wave of infections that left long lines at hospital emergency departmentsaccording to testimonies on the country’s social networks.
“Some older patients developed serious conditions after contracting the omicron variantbut they will recover from the infection after treatment,” said Li Yanming, head of the department of respiratory medicine and intensive care at Beijing Hospital, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday, December 23.
One of the experts from the National Health Commission, Jiao Yahui, declared that the country prepared medical facilities to deal with more serious cases of the disease, given the increase in the number of this type of patients after the decision of the authorities to relax ‘zero COVID’ policy who had ruled for nearly three years.
Tong Zhaohui, vice president of Chaoyang Hospital in the capital, said that his center has received an average of up to 400 patients with fever every day and about 500 in emergencies.
“The waiting time in the emergency room of our hospital is between three and six hours,” a doctor from the capital assured The Economic Observer in an article that later disappeared from her website, apparently prey to censorshipin which he added that “it is already difficult to find an available bed among the 80 intensive care beds.”
According to the Beijing authorities, the health system could be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel: this Wednesday, 65,000 patients with fever visited local hospitals, 11 percent lower figure to that of 73 thousand that was registered in previous days.
In recent weeks, the Chinese authorities have withdrawn a large part of the draconian measures that made up its zero tolerance strategy against COVIDassuring that in this “new situation” the virus causes fewer deaths.
However, the end of the obligation to undergo routine PCR tests for the majority of the population has resulted in a significantly lower detection of cases, since those who are asymptomatic and those with mild symptoms have the green light from the authorities to do so. quarantine at home.
In recent days, doubts have also arisen about the fidelity of the data on deaths offered by the health authorities, which barely count a handful of them due, according to an expert quoted by the official press, to the fact that deaths caused by underlying diseases in patients who were infected with the coronavirus are not counted as COVID deaths.
In addition, the authorities are preparing to deal with the next wave of infectionsscheduled according to Chinese experts for the Lunar New Year holidays, the largest annual migration in the world and which in 2023 will take place between January 21 and 27.
Thus, the Executive has already asked local governments to give priority to health services in rural areas “to protect the population”, noting “their relative scarcity of health care resources”, the high mobility during vacations and trips of migrant workers who return to their places of origin.
According to official data, China added 3,761 new cases of COVID on December 22 and did not register any deaths from the disease, although international research entities such as the British Airfinity estimate that the Asian country is dealing with a million new infected and up to 5 thousand deaths by the virus every day.