Hospitals are overwhelmed by the new Covid wave in China

 

The new Covid Wave in China has alerted the world’s attention by acquiring negative-Covid results from passengers from China to the rest of the world. On 7th December 2022, China decided to loosen some Covid -restrictions after weeks of nationwide protests against the country’s Zero-Covid approach. No Covid tests or tracking apps were required again for traveling travelling and entering public spaces, such as supermarkets, restaurants, and hospitals. 

Reuters estimated that around “9000 people die each day” because of Coronavirus in China since the Covid restrictions had been removed in early 2022.

Qi, A 62-year-old retired accountant in Beijing, reveals her experience within an overwhelmed hospital in Beijing.

“The coronavirus affected my husband with severe symptoms, so I had to take him to a nearby hospital in Beijing. I went to the hospital’s emergency department, and they shut me down and said that there ‘was no space’ but asked me to ‘go to other departments’ within the hospital. After running through the entire hospital and begging for help, eventually, there was a space within the hospital’s emergency department and my husband had his treatment there for three days. I’m so glad that my husband is getting much better and almost about to leave the hospital.”

“The emergency department was horrifying,” continues Qi, “There was a very long queue of patients aged over 80 years old, sitting on wheelchairs and waiting for treatment. My 64-year-old husband was the youngest and seemed to be the most optimistic case within the emergency department, because at least he could walk freely.”

“I was in and out of the emergency department for three days to look after my husband, and I saw at least 6 to 7 deaths during the day-time when I was there.”

“Before sending my husband to the hospital, I saw the images and video clips on the internet about the overwhelmed hospital in China and felt depressed. Once I was there and truly experienced the real environment, it was just horrifying. The emergency department was filled with around 20 to 30 patients, the room was awash in people crying all the time,” Qi reveals.

Qi comments, “The government should not lift the Covid restrictions when there are not enough medical facilities within the hospitals to fight the disease.”

“I’ve heard a story that a man travelled from the outskirts of Beijing and came to my hospital for treatment. After several rejections, he knelt in front of the doctors and nurses when eventually there was a space for him at the hospital,” reveals a retired doctor from ChaoYang Hospital in Beijing.

Nevertheless, the lack of fever drugs also sparked the chaos around China’s new waves of coronavirus.

“There is no where we can buy medicines to cure fevers. Vitamin C tablets are likewise in shortage. The main recourse for getting fever drugs is from our neighbourhood’s community,” Ling, a 60-year-old Beijing resident reveals.

“People spare fever drugs to each other via group chat. It was heart-warming when people help each other within our neighbourhood community.”

“I was very grateful for the past three years when the government looked after us with a strict Zero-Covid approach. We got Covid-tests every two to three days for free. I didn’t feel restricted; instead, I felt very secure about our well-being,” Ling expresses.

However, the younger generation seems optimistic about the consequences of easing the Covid restrictions amid protests.

“I am glad that China reopened the country when the new variant became less dangerous than the one three years ago when Coronavirus first began to spread in Wuhan, although the virus is still transmissible,” a 36-year-old resident in Beijing claims.

Nonetheless, a Seattle-based expert from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Murray, reckoned that the risk of China’s Covid outbreaks would be “very low” as there “is no new variant that has emerged but just subvariants of omicron.”