Strained Chinese healthcare system braces for spike in COVID-19 infections

China expect a spike in infections COVID-19 within a week, a health official said, and authorities anticipate an additional burden on the country’s health system, even though they are downplaying the severity of the disease and are still reporting no new deaths.

SIGHT: “Deaths from underlying illnesses are not COVID-19 deaths,” says Chinese epidemiologist

With the outbreak escalating and widespread protests against its “COVID zero” lockdown and testing regime, China began dismantling it this month, becoming the last major country to live with the virus.

His containment measures slowed the economy to its lowest growth rate in nearly half a century, clogging global supply chains and trade. With sick leave on the rise, more disruption is expected in the short term before the economy recovers in late 2023.

China reported fewer than 4,000 new local symptomatic COVID cases nationwide for December 22, and no new COVID deaths for the third day in a row. Authorities have restricted the criteria for determining COVID deaths, drawing criticism from many experts.

The media outlet The Paper, in which the Shanghai government participates, collected comments from Zhang Wenhong, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, in which he indicated that China is expected to “reach the peak of infections within a week”.

“The infection spike will also increase the rate of serious illness, which will have a certain impact on all our medical resources,” he said, adding that the wave will last another month or two after that. “We must be aware that infection is inevitable”.

However, Zhang said he had visited nursing homes around Shanghai, noting that the number of elderly with severe symptoms was low.

Nearly 37 million people may have been infected with COVID-19 on a single day this week in ChinaBloomberg News reported on Friday, citing estimates from the government’s top health authority.

Concerns about the short-term impact of the Chinese wave of COVID-19 sent stocks lower in China, Hong Kong and other Asian countries. The yuan was also weakening.

According to the British health data company Airfinity, China is likely to experience more than a million infections a day and more than 5,000 deaths a daywhich is a “marked contrast” with the official data.

A Shanghai hospital estimated that half of the 25 million inhabitants of the huge commercial hub will be infected by the end of next week. Consulted experts affirm that China could face more than a million deaths from COVID next year.

UNEXPECTED

China’s abrupt policy shift caught a fragile health system off guardso hospitals need more beds and blood, pharmacies are asking for more drugs, and authorities are hastily building clinics.

More than a dozen world health experts, epidemiologists, residents and political analysts interviewed by Reuters pointed out failure to vaccinate the elderly and communicate an exit strategy to the publicas well as the excessive attention paid to the eradication of the virus, as causes of the overload of the Chinese medical infrastructure.

The vaccination campaign for the elderly started three weeks ago has not yet borne fruit. China’s overall vaccination rate is over 90%, but that of adults with the booster dose drops to 57.9%, and to 42.3% in the case of those over 80, according to government data.

China spent heavily on testing and quarantine facilities over the past three years, instead of bolstering hospitals and clinics and training medical staff, these people said.

“There is an incredible lack of preparation for the arrival of the virusdespite having received … extensive warnings,” said Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious disease physician at the Rophi Clinic in Singapore.

China’s National Health Commission did not respond to requests for comment on the criticism.

The country has nine vaccines against COVID-19 of national development approved for use, all of them considered less effective than those made in the West that use the new mRNA technology.

A shipment of 11,500 BioNTech mRNA vaccines for German citizens residing in China has arrived at the German embassy in Beijing, a spokesman for the legation told Reuters on Friday. The embassy expects the first doses to be distributed “as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.

The World Health Organization has not received data from China on new hospitalizations for COVID-19 since Beijing abandoned its zero COVID policy. The WHO has said that the gaps in the data could be due to the Chinese authorities having difficulties in counting the cases.

Against a backdrop of growing doubts about the Beijing statistics, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that all countries, including China, must share information about their experiences with COVID-19.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.