Coronavirus in China: COVID ravages and Beijing’s crematoria can’t handle it

Many employees of the Beijing crematorium said so on Friday their shops are overflowing by the unprecedented surge of COVID cases in China which, according to the authorities, will soon reach rural areas of the country.

The outbreak is spreading rapidly across the country, a week after most of the health restrictions that had been in place for nearly three years were lifted.

Authorities admit it is now “impossible” to count the number of cases.

“We cremate 20 bodies a day, mainly elderly. Many people have recently fallen ill,” a crematorium employee told AFP. “Of the 60 who work here, more than 10 are COVID-positive, but we have no choice because there is a lot of work,” he added.

Workers at two other Beijing funeral homes, contacted by AFP, indicated that their factories are working 24 hoursoffering same-day cremation services to meet the high demand.

Another similar establishment has indicated that its waiting list is one week.

However, the official figures do not take into account any COVID-related deaths from 4 December.

The anti-Covid organization on Friday urged local governments to increase surveillance and medical care for people returning to their homes in rural areas ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday in January.

The event causes the largest population displacement in the world each year. This year it should be even higher since then travel restrictions lifted between provinces.

A new official position

Chinese state media and health experts downplay danger of omicron variant and respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan proposed to change the name of COVID for “cold virus”.

However, millions of older people they were not vaccinatedand antigen tests and anti-fever drugs are in short supply.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Hong Kong stated that the COVID it could kill a million people in China this winter, unless a fourth dose of the vaccine or new restrictions are imposed.

Officially, only nine deaths have been attributed to the outbreak since mid-November. the country is registering more than 10,000 daily cases since.

And before that, there had been no coronavirus-related deaths between May 28 and November 19.

When the first cases were detected, in December 2019 in Wuhan (center), many deaths of patients positive for the virus they were not registered due to strict regulations nationalities in attributing the death to the coronavirus, as explained at the time by the Chinese media.

The directors of five nursing homes told local press this week that they they had not received more antigen tests nor medicines due to shortages and that they had no plan for confinement if cases skyrocket.

In the capital, employees of many nursing homes, contacted on Friday by AFP, they refused to talk about the situation at your facilities.

Nationwide, many nursing homes continue to operate “closed loop,” a lockdown measure in which staff must sleep in the placeaccording to announcements published online in recent days.

But, in the absence of GP offices, the Chinese population they tend to go to the hospitaleven for a small problem, and this is congesting the establishments.

Videos of COVID patients sitting on stools outside crowded hospitals and receiving saline infusions have gone viral on social media.

AFP managed to geolocate one of them, filmed in front of a hospital in the city of Hanchuan, in the province of Hubei (in the center). A hospital employee confirmed the images were from Tuesday.

“Patients have volunteered to sit outside in the sun, because there were too many people inside“, he just told AFP.

Source: AFP