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BEIJING, KOMPAS.com – China’s hospitals are already under enormous pressure, following the country’s rapid 180-degree shift away from a zero-Covid policy.
Doctors and nurses passed the infection on to patients, as staff shortages seemed to keep asking frontline health workers to come in even if they themselves had the virus.
A Chinese professor specializing in health policy has been monitoring the crisis in his home country from Yale University in the United States (USA).
Chen Xi told the BBC that he has spoken to hospital directors and other medical personnel in China about the immense pressure on the current system.
Read also: China is expected to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic in mid-2023
“People who have been infected have to work in hospitals so that there is a transmission environment there,” he said. BBC Wednesday (14/12/2022).
Chinese hospitals are hastily ramping up the capacity of their fever wards to cope with the massive influx of patients.
However, the additional facilities were quickly filled. Even if the messages circulating have allowed infected residents to self-isolate to stay at home.
There is no “culture” of self-isolation
Professor Chen said more needs to be done to explain self-isolation to people in China.
“There’s no stay-at-home culture for mild symptoms,” she said.
“When people get sick, they all go to the hospital, which can easily undermine the health system.”
Residents have also raided pharmacies, causing a significant shortage of medicines to treat colds or flu across the country. Home testing kits for Covid-19 are also hard to find.
Read also: Potential peak of Covid-19 when Chinese restrictions are eased
In Beijing, despite the reopening of restaurants, customers are few and the streets are still quiet.
Companies tell employees they have to go back to the office, but many don’t want to.
It all makes sense in light of recent weeks, when Beijing insisted there would be no escape from the zero-Covid policy and required infected people to go to centralized quarantine facilities and a strict lockdown was still in effect.
A 180-degree turnaround in China’s zero-Covid policy
The coronavirus is something to be afraid of, and the Chinese people previously thought they were lucky that the Communist Party would not sacrifice them for freedom.
The easing of Covid restrictions in China is expected to be slower and very gradual.
But then came street protests in city after city. The protesters demanded their old life back. They want to be free to move again.
There have been clashes with the police and calls have been made for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to resign and for the Communist Party to hand over power.
Read also: China eases Covid-19 rules, drastic rule changes from Beijing
It was this wave of mass anger that broke the Beijing government’s zero-Covid policy.
Now, the goal of returning each outbreak to zero cases has been abandoned.
Covid-19 China spreading like wildfire and the directive from his government is that contracting this disease is nothing to worry about.
According to Professor Chen, this shows that the timing of China’s reopening “isn’t ideal” but that it must.
Residents queue to pick up medicine at a pharmacy in Beijing on Sunday, December 11, 2022. He said countries like Singapore and New Zealand are making adjustments as infections ease.
But China has moved very hard to contain a massive outbreak, as it has in cities like Beijing.
According to him, this means that the Chinese government is “listening to the voice of the protesters”. The problem, he said, was that this wasn’t the ideal time to open the restrictions.
“So the protesters may win, but the rapid collapse of government policies has scared the elderly into leaving their homes,” Chen said.
Read also: Chinese hackers steal millions of dollars in US Covid-19 relief funds
The skepticism of society
A woman the BBC spoke to on a walk with her grandson said she would stay away from crowded places.
He also admitted that he will continue to wear a mask and continue to wash his hands regularly.
Yet the reluctance to be in places where the infection is more likely to spread to all groups in society.
The impact on Beijing has been enormous.
The restaurant still seems deserted, as the city government still requires a negative PCR test result within 48 hours to dine. The problem is that most of the Covid test results don’t make it to China’s Covid health app.
This appears to have happened because the lab was overwhelmed with work when Covid-19 spread so rapidly.
A worker in a protective suit checks the queue outside a fever clinic at a Beijing hospital on Saturday, December 10, 2022.Read also: China slumps on Zero Covid policy, lifts restrictions as infections set records
Doctors are using social media in an attempt to reassure people they can stay home after contracting Covid.
Officials have also begun converting Covid isolation centers in China into temporary hospital facilities to deal with the explosion of infections.
In just one day this week, 22,000 people in Beijing tried to enter clinics with fever.
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