BEIJING — COVID-19 cases are surging in the
Chinese capital, officials said Monday, as the country navigates a rapid turn
away from its zero-tolerance coronavirus strategy.
اضافة اعلان
Just a few days after China began loosening
restrictions,
Beijing authorities said more than 22,000 patients had visited
hospitals across the city in the previous day — 16 times the number a week ago.
“The current trend of the rapid spread of the
epidemic in Beijing still exists,” said city health commission spokesman Li Ang
at a briefing Monday.
“The number of fever clinic visits and flu-like
cases increased significantly, and the number of ... emergency calls increased
sharply.”
China reported 8,626 domestic infections Monday but
with testing no longer mandatory for much of the population the number is
believed to be a lot higher.
As the country steers a tricky path out of its
zero-COVID policy towards living with the virus, many with symptoms have opted
to self-medicate at home.
Cold and fever medicines have sold out in virtually
all pharmacies across Beijing, and rapid antigen tests are dwindling as people
stock up in anticipation of a virus surge that threatens the lives of millions
of unvaccinated elderly.
Social media users reported a surge of infections in
smaller cities including Baoding in Hebei province and Dazhou in Sichuan, with
hospitals inundated and residents unable to buy medicines.
AFP was not immediately able to verify the claims.
“It’s really serious, the supply of medicine is not
enough and it’s being managed badly,” wrote one person on the Twitter-like
platform Weibo.
Lacking adequate medical infrastructure and primary
care triage, China’s rural interior is particularly vulnerable to health crises
such as COVID.
‘End of an era’
In a major move towards
unwinding years of hardline restrictions, China said Monday it would retire an
app used to track travel to areas with infections.
The state-run “Communications Itinerary Card” was a
central part of zero-COVID, keeping tabs on the movements of millions through
their phone signal data.
It was one of a panoply of tracking apps that have
governed everyday life through the pandemic. Most people still use local “health
codes” run by their city or province to enter shops and offices.
Social media users hailed the retirement of the
software, noting the symbolism of the government shutting down its main
tracking app.
“Bye bye, this announces the end of an era, and also
welcomes a brand new one,” one person wrote on Weibo.
Others asked what
would become of the mountains of data collected and hoped it would be deleted.
‘Spreading rapidly’
Kendra Schaefer, tech
partner at research consultancy
Trivium China, said the “political win of
returning to normalcy is ginormous”.
But that normalcy means the country faces a surge of
cases it is ill-prepared to handle, with millions of elderly not fully
vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lacking capacity to take on huge numbers
of patients.
China has one intensive care unit bed per 10,000
people, Jiao Yahui, director of the Department of Medical Affairs at the
National Health Commission, warned last week.
The official number of COVID cases has dropped
sharply from an all-time high recorded last month, but top Chinese health
expert Zhong Nanshan warned in state media Sunday that the Omicron variant was
“spreading rapidly”.
The easing of restrictions has also released pent-up
demand for domestic travel, with state broadcaster CCTV saying Monday that
flights from Beijing’s two main airports were expected to soon return to 70
percent of 2019 levels.
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