As concerns grow over China’s Covid surge, which could release a new Coronavirus mutant on the world, hospitals in Hebei are turning away patients, and the ill are sleeping on benches in hospital hallways or lying on floors.
China is currently suffering its first-ever national Covid wave, and ICUs are overburdened. China ceased lengthy quarantines, lockdowns, and strict testing. Even though China has reported no Covid-related fatalities since relaxing regulations, congested crematoriums show how severe the Covid rise is.
The elderly are becoming infected in Heiei, which has led to an overpopulation of ICUs and funeral houses. Ambulances were turned away from a hospital in Zhuozhou because the ICU was so full.
“This passageway has no electricity or oxygen. How can you save him if you can’t even give him oxygen? Turn back and leave right away if you don’t want any delays, a healthcare professional advised a patient’s family.
Some ambulances are travelling directly to cemeteries. Furnaces at the Zhuozhou crematorium are reportedly burning overtime as staff members struggle to deal with an increase in fatalities over the previous week. The number of bodies burned daily has increased from three to four before COVID-19 restrictions were removed, according to a funeral home employee, to 20 to 30.
According to experts, outdated home vaccines with low booster dose levels are creating a favourable environment for virus mutagenesis.
“The population of China is quite large, and the level of immunity is low. And it appears to be the environment in which we can witness an explosion of a novel variation, says Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray of Johns Hopkins University, an authority on infectious diseases.
Big waves of infection are frequently followed by the emergence of new variations, according to Ray.
In many regions of the world over the previous six to twelve months, “most of the mildness we’ve observed has been due to cumulative protection, either through vaccine or infection, rather than because the virus has altered” in intensity, Ray said.
Around a million new Covid infections are reported everyday in Zhejiang, a significant industrial region in China close to Shanghai; this figure is projected to treble over the coming days.
Recently, estimates of daily Covid infections in the cities of Qingdao and Dongguan each reached tens of thousands, much above the daily average nationwide.
Recently, reports of serious infections in China prompted worry from the World Health Organization. China is also establishing a national genetic database “to monitor in real time” how various strains are changing and the possible ramifications for public health. 50 of the 130 omicron variants discovered in China to yet have caused outbreaks.
However, Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said that as of right now, there is little information about genetic viral sequencing coming out of China.
We are unaware of everything that is happening. The pandemic is still ongoing, he declared.
