{"id":244860,"date":"2022-12-09T19:06:24","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T03:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=244860"},"modified":"2022-12-14T18:31:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T02:31:44","slug":"beijing-outbreak-widens-after-end-of-zero-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2022\/12\/beijing-outbreak-widens-after-end-of-zero-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing Outbreak Widens After End Of Zero-COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beijing\u2019s COVID outbreak seems to have widened after <\/span>the abandonment of China\u2019s long-held zero-COVID policy<\/span><\/a>. Daily reported new cases have dropped dramatically due to the end of mass testing but accounts and videos out of the capital indicate an uncontrolled surge threatening to overwhelm medical systems. The spike comes amid concerns over the level of official preparation for the consequences of looser controls<\/a>. At The New York Times, Keith Bradsher reported on <\/span>Beijing\u2019s plan to triage patients, a nationalist\u2019s anger over false case numbers, and an expert’s fear about the potential extent of the outbreak<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Across the country, officials have been scrambling to protect hospitals from being overwhelmed as more people become infected. At many of Beijing\u2019s hospitals, health workers screen people who show up with fevers to identify those who are seriously ill and send home those with milder symptoms.<\/span><\/p>\n

[…] \u201cThis problem should be exposed, and the numbers should be returned to their true appearance, or they should not be reported at all,\u201d said Hu Xijin, the former editor in chief of the Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, on Weibo, a popular social media site. \u201cThis is not conducive to maintaining the seriousness of official information nor is it conducive to shaping everyone\u2019s objective understanding of the spread of the epidemic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[…] Asked about the likelihood that 80 or 90 percent of China\u2019s population might catch the virus, Professor Jin said: \u201cThat\u2019s very probable, and the question is within how long they get it \u2014 and what\u2019s scary is, they don\u2019t seem to have a road map.\u201d [<\/span>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Friday, the State Council body tasked with leading China\u2019s COVID response <\/span>released guidelines for the \u201coptimization\u201d of medical resources<\/span><\/a> that will aim to build up the country\u2019s intensive care unit capacity by the end of December\u2014hospitals are now required to ensure 4 percent of beds are ICU beds. China <\/span>currently has<\/span><\/a> 138,100 ICU beds, and 80,500 ICU doctors and 220,000 nurses staffing them. A health official in Guangzhou <\/span>told The Financial Times<\/span><\/a>: \u201cOne of our biggest challenges is how hospitals cope with a surge in infections among doctors and nurses.\u201d Beijing residents have been <\/span>instructed to quarantine at home<\/span><\/a> if they are lightly symptomatic or asymptomatic. Medical experts have also encouraged the central government to <\/span>reclassify COVID to a Class B infectious disease<\/span><\/a>, which would provide a legal basis for the makeshift hospitals that have sprung up to quarantine COVID cases to be repurposed for normal medical treatment. At The South China Morning Post, Zhuang Pinghui reported on <\/span>the experience of Beijing residents as they face an unrestricted outbreak for the first time since 2020<\/strong><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Two employees from state-owned enterprises \u2013 who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media \u2013 said their companies scrapped requirements for PCR tests to enter their offices and increased the number of employees allowed in on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then people kept falling sick.<\/span><\/p>\n

One employee said she came to work but had to return home because she developed a fever before noon on the second day back in the office.<\/span><\/p>\n

[\u2026] Hu Youhai, a migrant worker from Jiangsu province, waited at the fever clinic at Peking Union Medical College Hospital for two hours to get a doctor to see his nine-year-old son late on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI suspected it was Covid-19 because he had such a high fever \u2026 and he ached all over his body,\u201d Hu said.Although people with a fever are advised to take a quick antigen test at home and rest, Hu said he had to take the son to see a doctor because the child had other worrying symptoms. [<\/span>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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This video taken in a hospital in Beijing is circulating on Wechat right now: pic.twitter.com\/fI7Kh0YAP4<\/a><\/p>\n

— Xifan Yang \u6768\u5e0c\u74a0 (@yangxifan) December 9, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n