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China Covid: Hospitals Under Strain in Wave of Infections

China's hospitals are already under so much pressure, following the country's rapid 180-degree shift in Covid policy that doctors and nurses could be infecting patients.

BBC 14 DEC 2022.

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An empty shopping street in Beijing this week

It seems frontline medical workers are being told to come in even if they have the virus themselves because of staff shortages.

A Chinese professor specialising in health policy has been monitoring the crisis in his home country from Yale University in the United States.

Chen Xi told the BBC that he has been speaking to hospital directors and other medical staff in China about the massive strains on the system right now.

"People who've been infected have been required to work in the hospitals which creates a transmission environment there," he said.

China's hospitals have hastily increased their fever ward capacity to meet a huge influx of patients, but these have been filling up quickly, in part because the message is still getting through that it is all right to stay at home if you catch the virus.

Prof Chen says much more needs to be done to explain this to people.

"There is no culture of staying at home for minor symptoms," he said. "When people feel sick they all go to hospitals, which may easily crash the healthcare system."

A rush on pharmacies has led to significant nationwide shortages of medicine used to treat a cold or the flu. Home testing kits for Covid-19 are also hard to come by.

In Beijing, though restaurants are allowed to open again, they have very few customers and the streets are quiet.

Companies are telling employees they should return to the office, but many don't want to.

This all makes sense when you consider that, just weeks ago, the government was saying that there will be no swerving from zero-Covid, that those infected must go to centralised quarantine facilities and that lockdowns were necessary.

The coronavirus was something to fear and Chinese people were lucky to live here because the Communist Party would not sacrifice them on the altar of opening up.

Now the goal of returning each outbreak to zero cases has been abandoned, Covid-19 is spreading like wildfire and the line from the government is that catching this disease is not something to worry about.

China's easing of Covid restrictions was expected to unfold more slowly, much more gradually.

Then came street protests, in city after city, with demonstrators demanding their old lives back. They wanted to be free to move around again. There were clashes with police and the chant was going up for China's leader Xi Jinping to resign and for the Communist Party to give up power.

This was the straw that broke zero-Covid's back.

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Delivery services of food and groceries are still seeing high demand as Beijing residents remain cautious on venturing outside