As a result of the abrupt reversal of China’s “zero-COVID” policy, numerous hospitals have been compelled to turn away ambulances and critically ill patients.
Due to a scarcity of accessible beds, emergency departments in smaller cities and villages outside of Beijing are crowded with sick patients slumped on benches and lying on the floor.
Because intensive care units are at capacity, hospitals cannot admit all of the patients who are rushed to them by ambulance.
Howard Bernstein, a physician living in Beijing, has never witnessed a situation that grave in his three decades of practice.
Bernstein, at the conclusion of a “stressful” shift at Beijing United Family Facility, told Reuters, “The hospital is completely swamped.”
Bernstein stated that not only is the intensive care unit full, but so are the emergency department, the fever clinic, and virtually every other ward in the hospital.
Almost all of the desperate patients seeking treatment for the virus are elderly COVID patients with pneumonia symptoms. The majority of patients have not received the COVID vaccine.
“Many of them were admitted to hospitals. “Because they’re not improving within two days, there’s no flow, so people keep arriving to the ER, but they can’t get upstairs into hospital rooms,” he explained. They spend days in the emergency room.
Since the Communist government abruptly abandoned its rigorous “zero-COVID” policy and without a plan to deal with the inevitable increase in infections, national illnesses have been on the rise.
No longer are Chinese people obligated to submit positive test results, nor is the government reporting the daily number of asymptomatic cases.
Bernstein, who had never treated a COVID patient before the restriction was abolished earlier this month, now sees dozens of such patients daily.
“I honestly believe that we were unprepared for this,” he stated.
Hospitals and other medical facilities have reported a lack of resources to address the spike in infections, and have been so short-staffed that nurses and medics have been obliged to go to work while testing positive for the virus and having a fever.
A nurse located in the western city of Xian said that 45 of 51 nurses in her department and all personnel in the emergency area of the hospital have contracted COVID in recent weeks.
Sonia Jutard-Bourreau, the chief medical officer of the private Raffles Hospital in Beijing, stated that the number of patients has climbed by five to six times the typical rate, and that the average age of patients has increased by 40 years in a week to over 70.
According to Jutard-Bourreau, the majority of patients have not been vaccinated, but many are still attempting to purchase Paxlovid, which is in dangerously limited supply at many hospitals.
“They desire the medication as a replacement for the vaccine, but the medication cannot replace the vaccine,” Judard-Bourreau explained.
In China, an estimated 37 million people caught COVID-19 on December 20 alone, and as many as 248 million people, or over 18% of the country’s population, contracted the virus in the first 20 days of December.
It is unclear how Chinese health officials arrived at the staggering number, as the government does not release detailed data on COVID and the country’s network of PCR testing booths was shut down earlier this month. Nevertheless, the increase has sparked global concerns that a new, dangerous strain may emerge.
»China’s hospitals are overwhelmed by the COVID outbreak«