At a hospital in Beijing’s affluent Chaoyang district, nearly 100 people lined up outdoors in near-freezing weather on Friday at a designated clinic for fever patients. Some residents flocked to pharmacies, buying up dwindling amounts of home coronavirus antigen testing kits and herbal medicines. Many people have chosen to stay at home, leaving the normally busy streets of the capital quiet, save for the sound of motorbikes from food delivery people.
Beijing is bracing for an increase in coronavirus cases, as extensive control had been suppressing the virus for almost three years was suddenly abandoned this week after China roll back its strict pandemic policy.
Across the country, officials have struggled to protect hospitals from being overwhelmed as more and more people become infected. At many hospitals in Beijing, medical staff screen people with fever to identify those with severe illness and send those with milder symptoms home.
Part of the challenge for the ruling Communist Party is that less than 1% of people in China had Covid until November, and many are vulnerable. The general public has also been informed by the state media for nearly three years that this virus leads to severe illness and death, a justification for the mass lockdowns and quarantines that have occurred. out. widespread protests last month in a rare challenge to the government.
Chinese medical experts and officials are stepping up efforts to urge people not to go to hospitals unless absolutely necessary. With the help of the government propaganda machinethey have assured residents that they have nothing to fear from the Omicron variants that are now spreading across the country.
“Infections are not scary,” Zhong Nanshan, a highly regarded respiratory scientist in China, said at a conference on Friday reported by state media. “99% of those infected can fully recover within 7 to 10 days. As long as we rest a lot, isolate ourselves and stay at home, we can recover quickly.”
Understanding the protests in China
As the government moves away from mass testing and contact tracing to focus on ramping up vaccinations and treating those who are seriously ill, the scale of China’s outbreak is increasingly unclear. Nationwide, the number of new cases has dropped, to just over 16,000 on Thursday, down from about 40,000 a day in early December – a drop so unlikely that even a nationalist also famously called the picture “distorted” and questioned the need for government. continue to release the number of cases.
Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, said on Weibo: “This problem needs to be exposed and the numbers must be returned to their correct form, or they should not be. more news.” a popular social media site. “This is not conducive to maintaining the seriousness of official information, nor is it conducive to shaping people’s objective understanding of the spread of the disease.”
In Beijing, where PCR testing booths have disappeared from many sidewalks, at least 2,600 cases were recorded as of Thursday, according to the government, but that number is considered a significant number.
A gray-haired woman who nearly surrendered Friday night at a fever clinic next to a hospital in Chaoyang district said she had been standing outside in line for nearly five hours. The woman – who gave only her last name, Liu, when discussing her personal health – said she had a mild fever on Thursday and lasted until Friday.
“I couldn’t find cold or fever medicine in any pharmacy, so I went here,” she said. “I didn’t expect I would wait so long.”
Although the flow of people at the fever clinic is only about 100 people, it moves very slowly. A few workers in hazmat suits, N95 masks and plastic face shields were stationed inside and were screening patients.
Those in line seem to have developed their own consensus on the medical emergency. A woman approached an elderly man in a wheelchair and quietly pushed him straight through the line and through the door of the fever clinic. No one objected.
Across the street, dozens of people lined up in another slow line on the sidewalk outside a pharmacy. They included a migrant worker who said he hoped to buy anything that would relieve his mild fever and sore throat.
The worker, surnamed Chen, said he was disappointed to learn from others in the store that the pharmacy had sold out of fever-reducing medicine.
“I’ll see what I can get,” he said. “There are no drugs here, nor are there any other places.”
Some residents say they have contracted the virus but are not seriously ill.
Hannah Yang, 38, a manager at a film distribution company in Beijing, said more than half of her colleagues tested positive this week. “Most people don’t feel the need to see a doctor,” she says. “Many people are stockpiling drugs.”
She said that she and her son, an elementary school student, also tested positive Friday morning. “I didn’t feel anything,” Ms. Yang said. “It seems that the virus is very gentle.” She says her symptoms are a lot milder than the cold she caught three months ago.
“I feel like there must be a lot of positive cases in Beijing,” she said. “No one is seriously consolidating against the virus anymore.”
Despite the government’s reassurances, the sudden dismantling of the three-year bureaucracy aimed at stemming the spread of the virus has alarmed health experts outside mainland China. Instead, experts have called on China to launch a six-month vaccination campaign before opening up.
A year ago, China vaccinated more than 20 million people every day. But that effort failed last June, with vaccination numbers dropping to a few hundred thousand people a day. After urging people to get two shots and a booster shot last year, China has yet to switch to a fourth dose. So most of the population has been unprotected recently.
China has not yet approved an mRNA vaccine. Instead, its vaccine is based on an older technology that has been shown in other countries to be less effective than an mRNA vaccine.
Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong, said that China needs to rapidly increase its use of existing Chinese vaccines, while also importing vaccine mRNA for the vaccination campaign. And China should buy as many Paxlovid and other oral treatments for coronavirus infections as possible, Professor Jin said.
But even these steps now may not be enough. Professor Jin said that the current wave of cases is spreading so fast that China should consider sending unvaccinated elderly people, the most vulnerable, into newly built makeshift hospitals near the city. here to protect themselves. These field hospitals were used until the last few days to isolate Covid patients.
Professor Jin said that having many people in China with Covid-19 at the same time could help the country quickly overcome the pandemic by building natural immunity, but it carries the risk of causing many deaths. death. Outside of China’s major cities, the country’s healthcare system is chronically underfunded and understaffed. A wave of critically ill patients can quickly overwhelm hospitals in small towns, where there are very few intensive care beds.
When asked about the possibility that 80 or 90 percent of China’s population could contract the virus, Professor Jin said: “It’s very likely, and the question is how long they’ve been infected — and what is it?” The scary thing is, they don’t seem to have any symptoms of infection. navigation map.”
Li You, Amy Chang Chien and Bronze Joy contribute reports and research.
