China has reduced testing and stopped reporting most mild COVID cases. China is among a few countries that managed to stop most domestic transmission of the virus in 2020, but it’s the last to end restrictions.
and stopped reporting most mild cases. But in cities and towns around Baoding and Langfang, in Hebei province, an area that was among the first to face an unchecked outbreak, Associated Press reporters saw hospital intensive care units overwhelmed by patients, and ambulances being turned away.
showed a 15% fatality rate for those older than 80 and unvaccinated, said Jin Dong-yan, a virology expert at Hong Kong University.China has higher vaccination rates than Hong Kong did at the time of its omicron outbreak, but many people are vulnerable to infection, especially the elderly. Vaccination rates have increased over 10-fold, to over a million doses administered a day, since the start of the month. But Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at India’s Christian Medical College in Vellore said prioritizing the elderly would be key. Unlike other countries, China prioritized vaccinating the more mobile young to prevent the virus from spreading, said Ray Yip, the founding director of the U.S. CDC office in China.
That means the reported number of beds more than doubled in just under three weeks. But this number "might be wrong," said Yu Changping, a doctor at the Department of Respiratory Medicine of People’s Hospital of Wuhan University. "It is impossible that the number could have jumped sharply within such a short time," Yu said.
Potential shortages would depend on how quickly cases increase, and if those with mild symptoms don’t stay at home to ration resources for the very sick hospitals could still get overwhelmed, said Chen.To try to protect its health system, Beijing has converted temporary hospitals and centralized quarantine facilities to increase the number of fever clinics from 94 to 1,263. But rural areas may suffer, as the vast majority of China’s ICU beds are in its cities.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle predicts deaths could reach a million by the end of 2023 if the virus spreads unchecked. But Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the institute, said the government would likely be able to reduce this toll with renewed social distancing measures.
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