A Beijing hospital ran out of beds, forcing patients to rest on gurneys or lie on corridor floors as COVID-19 infections rampage across the country, straining the resources of public health sectors.
“We don’t have beds, we don’t have oxygen and we have a room full of sick people waiting,” a health worker at the emergency room at Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital told the Financial Times before Christmas.
China has seen COVID-19 cases rise following the rollback of the country’s “zero COVID” policy, as the abrupt change came without any increase in vaccines. Instead, officials simply tried to bolster hospitals in anticipation of a new wave of COVID-19 by setting up hundreds of “fever clinics” to ramp up testing.
Hospitals were unprepared for how significant the wave turned out to be, with the Chuiyangliu hospital in eastern Beijing overflowing with new arrivals and unable to isolate them properly on January 5.
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One report even suggested that hospitals have told patients to “bring your own bed” due to shortages.
Images from the Associated Press show elderly women bent over with oxygen masks in hallways as they await triage from doctors.
Elderly patients rest along the corridor of a Beijing hospital while receiving intravenous drops on January 5, 2023. The patients, most of them elderly, were on stretchers in the corridors and taking oxygen while sitting in wheelchairs. wheels as COVID-19 continues to rampage in the Chinese capital. .
(AP Photo/Andy Wong)
People wearing face masks look at their phones and watch their elderly relatives receive intravenous drops in the corridor of a Beijing hospital on January 5, 2023.
(AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, told Fox News Digital that the resulting wave of COVID-19 infections shows that the “zero-COVID” strategy “clearly failure”.
“As soon as they released [the policy]there was rampant spread of a highly contagious subvariant, XBB, and a high risk of a new, more dangerous variant emerging,” Siegel said. “China stuck with its own vaccines, which are inferior to ours, and there hasn’t been much recent acceptance of the vaccine, so most vaccines have disappeared.
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He added that China’s “vulnerable populations have low uptake of the vaccine, leading to hospitalization and death.”
The most recent estimates indicate that deaths could rise from 9,000 a day to 25,000 a day in January, a stark contrast to the astronomically low 5,227 deaths before the end of “zero-COVID” compared to the total population, despite the fact that Siegel said that “we cannot trust [China’s] numbers.”
Patients receive intravenous drops at a hospital emergency room in Beijing on January 5, 2023.
(AP Photo/Andy Wong)
An elderly patient receives an intravenous drip while using a ventilator in the corridor of a Beijing hospital on January 5, 2023.
(AP Photo/Andy Wong)
The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed concern about China’s lack of transparency regarding its current situation, with Emergencies Director Dr. Michael Ryan arguing that the current figures from China “underrepresent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions and particularly in terms of deaths,” the British newspaper Evening Standard reported.
As COVID-19 cases continued to spread, China changed its criteria for reporting key data, primarily what it qualifies as a COVID-related death, limited to deaths caused by respiratory failure and pneumonia, and stopped reporting cases. asymptomatic.
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President Joe Biden said China had been “very sensitive” when the United States and the WHO raised concerns that officials “had not communicated.” The US, along with several other nations, has imposed testing requirements for travelers from China, with Morocco outright banning any arrival from the country.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning told reporters on Thursday: “Facts have shown that China has always, in accordance with the principles of legality, timeliness, openness and transparency, maintained close communication and has shared relevant information and data with WHO in a timely manner. .”
Mourners stand outside a crematorium in Beijing on December 31, 2022.
(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man places his hand on a coffin outside a crematorium in Beijing on December 31, 2022.
(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
“For the time being, the COVID situation in China is under control. As China adjusts its COVID response policy, we will continue to carry out activities, including technical exchanges with the WHO,” Mao said during a press briefing. “The WHO Secretariat is expected to take a science-based, objective and fair position and play a positive role in addressing the pandemic globally.”
Mao added that “the COVID situation in China is under control,” but images from China tell a different story as images of street cremations increase as the number of deaths and bodies overwhelm funeral homes.
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In a clip shared on Twitter, a wooden coffin can be seen burning on the side of what is supposed to be a road in rural China; another shows families gathered around a cremation in a parking lot in the middle of a city, according to the New York Post.
And Bloomberg reported that funeral homes cannot afford to give families more than 10 minutes to grieve in a room full of bodies on gurneys before moving on, with one funeral home handling more than 500 corpses, five times the usual number.
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One family said they were “lucky” it was winter because they had to wait five days before the funeral home in Shanghai could come to collect their relative’s body.
An employee at Longhua Funeral Home told Bloomberg that “the whole system is at a standstill right now.”
