“Up to 80%” of the staff of several health centers become infected due to the shortage of doctors at work
An unprecedented wave of infections is spreading across China days after the government eased harsh restrictions on its ‘covid zero’ policy. Experts predicted that declaring the end of automatic placement in quarantine centers, added to the cessation of mass PCR testing campaigns, would increase the number of positives in the country. And so it happens. The relaxation of the measures is causing long queues at pharmacies and medicines for fever are not in stock.
The worst situation is in hospitals, where a growing number of doctors and nurses have become infected and still have to go to work due to the large accumulation of patients arriving with symptoms of the coronavirus, according to Reuters. From the Beijing public hospital, they confirm that they have “up to 80%” of infected staff. The same situation is occurring in other major centers in the capital that are understaffed and where surgeries and surgeries have been canceled unless the patient is in an extremely serious situation.
Wan Ling, head nurse at a hospital in Huashan, Anhui province, denounced on the social network Weibo that many of her colleagues were infected, relatively severe and with “high fever”. At the Tongji health center, located in Wuhan, several doctors also tested positive. “They have to keep working while they are sick,” an unnamed internal source told Reuters.
The number of cases in the Asian giant has skyrocketed, but it is “impossible” to determine the true extent of the epidemiological situation, health authorities acknowledged yesterday. “Many asymptomatic people no longer undergo PCR testing, making it impossible to accurately determine the true number of people infected,” they warned from the Ministry of Health.
What is known is that hospitals are overwhelmed. “Every day, between 700 and 800 people arrive with fever,” warned Li, a doctor at a health center in Sichuan province, after denouncing that “stocks of medicines for fever and cold” were running out. We are waiting for the delivery of new suppliers.” “Nearly 200 patients with covid symptoms came to see me last night,” said an employee of the Chengdu clinic. In that sense, Li reported that “some nurses tested positive. There are no special protection measures for the staff and I think many of us will be infected soon.”
During the pandemic, China has opened 14,000 fever clinics in major hospitals and 33,000 in community health centers. Almost 30% of people over 80 have not been vaccinated and only 40% have received the booster dose.
Without the measures, scenes of collapse in hospitals are repeated, such as those at the beginning of the pandemic that hit the world. Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chunlan warned that the number of new infections in Beijing is “growing rapidly”. Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, assured that the medical resources are insufficient to deal with the overload of positives; that’s why there was a high death rate in this city during the pandemic, he said. “And unfortunately that’s going to happen in a month or two,” he warned. The die is cast.
Source: La Verdad
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