China supports healthcare system as COVID-19 outbreak spirals out of control

Although authorities have suspended official case counts, China is racing against time to increase the number of hospital beds and create new care points as the Covid-19 outbreak in the country seems to be increasing. After years of grueling “covid-zero” policy, Beijing launched a breakthrough last month after national protests came face-to-face with the government – which could mean accelerating transmission in a population with no previous contact with the virus.

Unofficial reports indicate a widespread wave of new covid-19 cases in the country. A parallel follow-up was carried out by international observers, based on reports from relatives of the victims, as the government suspended the official count of confirmed cases, claiming that it would be impossible to actually assess the outbreak once the lockdown and mandatory testing ended. There is a demand for a large number of patients who apply to health units across the country with symptoms of fever and for funerals.

While China’s National Health Commission said five deaths were recorded due to covid on Tuesday, the 20th, all in Beijing, funeral workers in the northeast and southwest of the country reported overcrowding in the crematorium after the death toll was higher than normal. .- an indicator that causes alarm but cannot be directly related to the pandemic.

Officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, say the death toll is rising in many cities. In Chongqing, a city of 30 million, a crematorium worker said the number of bodies arriving in the area had increased so much that there was no place to hide them. Another worker in Guangzhou, in the south of the country, said the average number of cremated bodies a day was more than 30.

“We’re burning about 40 bodies a day, when previously it was only a dozen, three or four times more than in previous years,” a worker from the same region, but from another crematorium, told France-Presse. It was difficult to say whether the increase in deaths was due to covid.

With the new census system, Chinese health authorities consider deaths from COVID-19 only for those suffering from the disease, excluding deaths attributed to underlying conditions such as diabetes and heart disease that increase their risk of serious illness.

In many other countries, guidelines require that any death in which coronavirus is a factor is counted as a death due to covid-19.

“Currently, after being infected with the Omicron variant, the main causes of death are still previous diseases,” Wang Guiqiang of Peking University First Hospital said at a press conference at the National Health Commission.

“Older people have other pre-existing pathologies, only a very small proportion die from respiratory failure directly caused by Covid,” he added.

The US State Department said on Monday the 19th that the increase in cases in China should be viewed as an international concern.

“We now know that when the virus spreads, it gets out of control, has the potential to mutate and threaten people everywhere,” spokesman Ned Price said. “Given the size of China’s GDP, the toll of the virus is alarming to the rest of the world,” he added.

(with international agencies)