A global concern has cropped up again as China is badly gripped with Covid pandemic but China’s National Health Commission stopped publishing the update on the outbreak, ANI reported. The gloomy stories are streaming in that the Covid outbreak has roiled China. Hospitals in China are overwhelmed with Covid patients.
Intensive care units are abysmally packed, turning away ambulances. Relatives of sick people are running helter-skelter for hospital beds. Patients are reported to be slumping on benches at the corridors of hospitals. Also grim pictures are, according to media reports, coming from morgues in China. Doctors collapsed while treating humongous numbers of patients as the Covid outbreak has upended China healthcare systems.
Here are 5 key points on the China Covid crisis
Publishing official data stopped
According to The Global Times, China’s National Health Commission (NHC), which earlier issued the country’s COVID-19 cases on a regular basis, stopped publishing the update.
According to the statement given by NHC, “China’s National Health Commission (NHC) will stop publishing daily Covid-19 case data from Sunday. Instead, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention will release Cocid-related information for study and reference.”
According to a report published by ANI, China has changed the way it registers Covid-19 deaths. Now, only those who die from respiratory failure or pneumonia after testing positive are recorded. This is different to other countries that register deaths within a time frame of a positive test or where Covid-19 is recorded to have contributed to the cause of death. This move may downplay the extent of deaths reported in China.
People frenetic for hospitalisation
China is badly struggling with its biggest waves of Covid-19 infections. This has hit people, especially the elderly, hard. Covid patients need urgent medical care, but all hospitals are reported full. Hospital authorities says, “ there’s no beds here,” reported AP
Emergency wards are jam-packed with patients. Intensive care units are reported to be turning away ambulances. Relatives of sick people are madly searching for hospital beds. Patients are seen to have slumped on benches in hospital corridors. They are lying on floors for a lack of beds.
Challenges for medical workers
The spike in Covid cases in China has severely hit hospitals in Beijing and other major Chinese cities, reported NHK World. Scores of people in China have been infected with coronavirus since the ‘zero-covid policy’ was diluted on December 7. The health authorities in Qingdao in Shandong Province estimated recently that 490,000 to 530,000 people per day have got infected with the virus. Dongguan in Guangdong Province, manufacturing hub of China, on Friday reported 250,000 to 300,000 cases, according to NHK World, reported ANI.
The spike in Covid cases has posed an unprecedented challenge for doctors and medical workers. Around 500 patients daily are received at the emergency unit, said a Beijing hospital official. According to a media report, nearly 20 per cent of the Covid patients have developed serious symptoms. Hospitals in Beijing are arranging makeshift intensive care units and increasing the number of beds for patients with serious symptoms in the face of rising Covid cases, reported NHK World.
‘100 million Covid cases expected’
Experts are expecting around 100 million Covid cases and one million deaths in China amid the recent spike in infection. Dr Neeraj Kumar Gupta, head of department of Pulmonary Medicine at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital, said that around 100 million Covid cases, five million hospital admissions and one million deaths in China are expected on the basis of mathematical calculations, reported ANI. Chinese people have low immunity owing to the country’s strict lockdown strategies, said Gupta.
250 million people hit with Covid
According to Radio Free Asia citing leaked official documents circulating on social media, around 250 million people in China may have been hit by the coronavirus in merely 20 days after the zero-covid policy was diluted recently. In the 20-minute meeting of China’s National Health Commission, as per the leaked document, 248 million people were down with Covid-19 from December 1 to 20, or 17.65 per cent of China’s population. According to Radio Free Asia, the data on Covid crisis released by government officials on December 20 is far cry from the reality as nearly 37 million were estimated, ANI reported.