Covid-19 chaos at China’s hospitals as stringent control policy eases

lengthy quarantines and regular mass testing, the country’s hospitals are feeling the first shock of a giant wave of infections and shortage of health workers.

Faced with difficulties such as the shortage of intensive care resources, a significant urban-rural gap in health resources and still-immature telemedicine, mitigating the impact of the coming surge has become the biggest challenge facing China as it continues the shift from the stringent “zero-Covid” strategy.

When a patient is found to be infected, hospital staff members need to get tested, the ward needs to be sterilized and some surgeries and special treatments have to be canceled. The vast majority of Covid patients have mild symptoms, but given the huge totals, there may still be a high number of severe cases, resulting in asaid Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital.

After the removal of the testing requirement, hospitals immediately felt the pressure. When Caixin reporters called a score of hospitals in Beijing and Wuhan on Dec 6, several of them said their outpatient clinics were temporarily closed after receiving positive patients. Guangzhou Women and Children Medical Center recently expanded its fever clinics from 2,100 square meters to 2,600 square meters and from seven exam room to 13. It also set up zones for negative, positive and pending-result patients. Staff working in each zone are required to reduce contact with other areas.

Meanwhile, there is no clear criteria for when to close a department or an entire hospital. Under previous regulations, if there were two positive cases among the medical staff, the hospital would be immediately closed, a nurse at the major Guangzhou hospital told Caixin. An even smarter solution might be to allow asymptomatic positive medical staff to directly serve positive patients, Wang said.

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