China’s ongoing battle against a COVID surge has completely devastated the country’s healthcare infrastructure, especially in Hebei province.
Hospitals in Baoding and Langfang have been forced to turn away ambulances and sick patients seeking treatment, while health administrators have been forced to treat patients in overcapacity intensive care units on benches or on the ground. authorities said.
“I don’t have much hope,” said Yao Ruyan, whose elderly mother-in-law requires urgent medical attention because she contracted the coronavirus. However, Ella Yao has been unable to find a hospital with space to treat her, the Associated Press reported.
“They say there are no beds here,” he told AP reporters outside a fever clinic in China’s Hebei province.
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Yao and her husband said they have received the same response at every hospital: There is no room for another patient. After the family drove to the hospital in Zhuozhou, which is an hour’s drive from Yao’s hometown, the answer was the same.
“I’m furious,” added a tearful Yao. “We’ve been out for a long time and I’m terrified because she’s having trouble breathing.”
And the problem exists for more than just Yao.
An ICU at Baoding No. 2 Hospital in Zhuozhou was so full that a medical worker instructed people carrying a patient from an arriving ambulance to seek care elsewhere.
“There is no oxygen or electricity in this corridor!” the worker yelled, as the Associated Press reported. “If you can’t even give him oxygen, how can you save him?”
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“If you don’t want delay, turn around and get out quickly!” added the worker.
Similar complaints have been echoed by crematoriums in the region.
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At the Zhuozhou crematorium, furnaces are burning around the clock as workers struggle to keep up with a surge in deaths, an employee told the Associated Press.
A funeral home worker said they were burning 20 to 30 bodies a day, up from just three to four before the Chinese government dramatically eased COVID-related restrictions on Dec. 7.
“There have been so many people dying,” said Zhao Yongsheng, a funeral worker. “They work day and night, but they can’t burn them all.”
An ambulance prepares to transfer a patient in intensive care to other hospitals due to overcapacity at the emergency department of Langfang No. 4 People’s Hospital in Bazhou city, north China’s Hebei province , on Thursday, December 22, 2022.
(AP Photo)
Funeral homes in China’s capital were also full, forcing some people to travel hours to find someone available to cremate their dead.
“They said we would have to wait 10 days,” said a resident identified simply by the last name Liang.
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The Chinese government has reported just seven deaths from COVID-19 since easing restrictions on December 7, but in the absence of a solution to provide prompt and adequate care, China’s outlook in its battle against COVID looks bleak.
The officially reported COVID death toll in China since the global outbreak began in the final months of 2019 is just 5,241. For context, the official death toll in the United States is over 1.1 million.
A man covers the face of an elderly woman whose vital signs have stagnated with a rag as emotional family members quietly gather around her to say a final farewell before her body is taken to the emergency department of Langfang No. 4 People’s Hospital in Bazhou city in north China’s Hebei province on Thursday, December 22, 2022.
(AP Photo)
Models suggest that large numbers of people will continue to be infected and die in Beijing and the rest of China.
Experts have predicted that China will eventually experience between one million and two million deaths over the next year, and the World Health Organization has said that Beijing’s way of counting deaths caused by COVID has allowed the country to “underestimate the true death toll”.
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A Chinese health official said on Tuesday that China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID death toll, disregarding deaths that would be attributed to COVID BS counted by countries using a broader definition.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
