China Covid surge: Ambulances turned away as ICUs packed, patients lying on hospital floors without oxygen, electricity

Beijing: China’s Covid situation is turning grim with patients lying untreated on hospital benches and floors, and ambulances being turned away as ICUs overcrowd.

Though the Xi Jinping government has decided it will no longer release daily Covid count after a leaked document suggested 250 million fresh infections in mere 20 days, visuals and posts on social media show hospitals and morgues fully packed with experts predicting million to 2 million Covid deaths next year.

The current Covid surge in China is driven by the highly infectious BF.7 sub-variant on Omicron. The healthcare workers were not fully prepared to tackle the surge in cases after the zero-Covid policy was diluted in the first week of December.

‘Never seen anything like this’

A report by news agency Reuters quoted Beijing-based doctor Howard Bernstein describing the Covid situation in China, saying he never seen anything worse like this in more than three decades.

The doctor further said most of the patients arriving at his hospitals are elderly and many are severely unwell with Covid and pneumonia symptoms.

“The hospital is just overwhelmed from top to bottom,” the report quoted Bernstein said, adding, “The ICU is full, as are the emergency department, the fever clinic and other wards.”

Don’t Miss: China says producing 60 million antigen test kits per day, but then why aren’t people getting them?

“A lot of them got admitted to the hospital. They’re not getting better in a day or two, so there’s no flow, and therefore people keep coming to the ER (emergency room, but they can’t go upstairs into hospital rooms,” he said.

“They’re stuck in the ER for days,” the doctor added.

‘We were unprepared for this’

Dr Howard Bernstein said, “The biggest challenge, honestly, is I think we were just unprepared for this.”

The report quoted chief medical officer of a private hospital in Beijing Sonia Jutard-Bourreau saying that most of the patients who are getting infected of Covid are not vaccinated.

She further said that hospitals are overwhelmed because people are rushing there to purchase Pfizer-made Covid treatment, which is out of stock in most places in the country.

“They want the medicine like a replacement of the vaccine, but the medicine does not replace the vaccine,” Jutard-Bourreau said.

Meanwhile, news agency The Associated Press quoted a health worker in a hospital in Zhuozhou telling relatives of a patient, “There’s no oxygen or electricity in this corridor. If you can’t even give him oxygen, how can you save him? If you don’t want any delays, turn around and get out quickly.”

Doctors, nurses treating Covid patients test positive

Reuters quoted a nurse from western city of Xian saying that 45 of 51 nurses in her department and all staff in the emergency department have been infected with Covid in recent weeks.

“There are so many positive cases among my colleagues. Almost all the doctors are down with it,” the nurse said.

With more than 50 per cent of hospital staff on leave after getting infected with Covid, non-infected healthcare workers are being forced to work for longer hours.

Why China stopped publishing daily Covid count?

On Sunday, China’s National Health Commission said that it will no longer release daily Covid-19 count. It did not specify the reason of its latest move.

However, according to Radio Free Asia, leaked government documents are making rounds on social media which suggests that 248 million or 17.65 per cent of China’s population were infected with Covid-19 between 1 and 20 December.

Must Read: WATCH: Medical services in China crumble under unprecedented COVID surge as bodies pile up

Morgues are fully packed and bodies are piled up in crematoriums but China says no Covid deaths have been reported in the country recently.

Interestingly, China has narrowed its definition for classifying deaths due to COVID by counting only those involving Covid-caused pneumonia or respiratory failure.

“It’s not medicine, it’s politics,” Jutard-Bourreau told Reuters. “If they’re dying now with COVID it’s because of COVID. The mortality rate now it’s political numbers, not medical,” he added.

Zhejiang sees million Covid cases daily

Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, has been witnessing around a million new daily Covid-19 cases. The provisional government expects the number of fresh infections to double in the coming days.

There has been a clamouring call by citizens and experts who called for more accurate data as infections surged after the country made sweeping changes to a zero-COVID policy.

Also Read: Omicron subvariant BF.7 behind China Covid spike already existed in India. Do we need to be scared?

“The infection peak is estimated to arrive earlier in Zhejiang and to enter a period of elevated level around New Year’s Day, during which the daily new infection number will be up to two million,” the Zhejiang government said in a statement.

‘Most dangerous weeks’ for China

According to a research note from Capital Economics, “China is entering the most dangerous weeks of the pandemic. The authorities are making almost no efforts now to slow the spread of infections and, with the migration ahead of Lunar New Year getting started, any parts of the country not currently in a major COVID wave will be soon.”

Reports said in Zhejiang, visits to fever clinics hit 408,400 a day - which is 14 times normal levels - in the past week.

Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .