slow investment
China’s zero-Covid quest increased pressure on hospitals and medical staff due to a centralized medical system requiring people to be hospitalized even with mild symptoms. The government started allowing home quarantine only on 7th December.
While China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention continually warned that a large-scale outbreak would have a devastating impact on the health system, the determination to eradicate the virus put a strain on medical resources.
Some experts, such as researcher Hong Xiao of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said zero-covid has proved costly and dangerous to public health, taking money and medical workers on the front lines of the pandemic and treating patients with other conditions. prevents it from being done.
Other researchers say the current threat to China’s health care system has been exaggerated.
Chen Jiming, a researcher at China’s Foshan University, said there is every possibility that China’s medical system can cope now that the country has ended quarantines for asymptomatic and mild cases.
“I think, now, that China may well weather the rising tsunami of COVID-19,” he said. “Certainly, medical systems are under a lot of pressure these days, but I think the government can manage it.”
Still, China’s investment in medical resources such as the growth rate of hospital beds and medical staff slowed during the pandemic, official data show. While overall health spending grew from 2019 to 2021, it dropped slightly as a share of GDP for the first time in more than six years, to 6.5% last year versus 7.1% in 2020 and 6.6% in 2019.
It’s not clear how much was spent building quarantine facilities or providing testing, but analysts’ estimates gathered in May put China’s planned COVID-related spending this year at about $52 billion.
Faced with a surge in infections, officials have tried to play catch-up. According to one review, local government tenders have gone up for the purchase of ventilators and patient monitors. Between November 15 and December 15, 423 tenders for ventilators were published, up from 283 in the previous period and 200 the year before that.
Even though the government has changed its message, urging people to stay at home unless they are very ill, patients are flocking to hospitals and clinics after three years of government propaganda about the dangers of the virus .
In Tiananmen, a small city near Wuhan, infected patients are camped out outside clinics as they are given intravenous drips, according to a resident who shared the images.
In Hanchuan, Hubei province, patients sat in their cars to receive IV fluids through the vehicle’s windows, as shown in footage obtained on December 14.
In some cities, a lack of clear guidance about what happens when someone is infected is adding to the chaos.
At a public hospital in Beijing, a senior doctor said all surgeries have been canceled except in cases where the patient may die the next day.
“Up to 80% of doctors in Beijing’s top hospitals are infected with the virus but are forced to work,” he said on condition of anonymity. Because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
According to the World Health Organisation, China has about 2 physicians per 1,000 people, compared to 4.3 in Germany and 5.8 in the UK. The United States has 3.6 intensive-care beds per 100,000 people, compared with 34.7 in Germany, 29.2 in Germany and 12.5 in Italy, World Population Review data show.
no roadmap
China had other compulsions to follow a strict zero-Covid approach this year, given that major events could lead to a major outbreak. Ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February, the government tightened epidemic controls and state media warned of the dangers of the virus.
Ahead of a Communist Party congress in October, where Xi is seeking to consolidate his rule with a third term, officials stressed there can be no deviation from zero-Covid despite the economic cost and in any way warned of the risks of reopening.
“Once epidemic prevention and control is relaxed, a large number of people will be infected within a short period of time, a large number of serious cases and deaths will occur, resulting in a shortage of medical resources,” the People’s Daily, the party’s official The newspaper, in a commentary on October 12, called for sticking with zero-Covid.
As Xi tightens his grip on power and his focus remains on eliminating the virus at any cost, the leadership has circulated no blueprint for how China will move beyond the humiliating sanctions.
When infections began to rise in recent weeks, it became clear that the virus had outpaced zero-Covid protection.
But Xi’s sudden U-turn meant many companies were unprepared with sick-leave policies or protective gear, while many ordinary Chinese, not used to treating Covid at home, turned to cold and flu drugs. I flooded the pharmacies.
Some cities said employees with mild symptoms could continue to go to work, with local media adding to the confusion. A Shanghai hospital told its staff this week to prepare for a “tragic battle”.
At least 10 medical experts said they expect infections to peak in the next one to two months, around the Lunar New Year holiday that begins on January 21.
Keith Neal, emeritus professor of epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said what Hong Kong experienced earlier this year is a “good marker of what could happen” in mainland China.
“The main challenge will be the large number of serious infections and deaths in vulnerable populations largely because they have not been exposed to infection or vaccinated,” he said.
The US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, which is part of the University of Washington, said last week that China’s sudden lifting of COVID restrictions is expected to result in more than 1 million deaths by 2023.