Coronavirus: China’s hospitals appear to be overcrowded – WHO

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hospitals in China appear to be filling up over fears of a new Covid-19 outbreak.

Despite officials’ claims that numbers are “relatively low,” Dr. Michael Ryan says intensive care units (ICU) are busy.

On Wednesday, no one died from Covid in China, although experts are skeptical about the disease’s true impact.

As the latest Covid surge reaches China, hospitals in Beijing and other locations have begun filling up.

China has established rigorous health regulations as part of its zero Covid strategy since 2020.

However, following historic protests against the severe regulations, the administration repealed the majority of those laws two weeks ago.

Since then, the number of cases has skyrocketed, prompting concerns about a high mortality rate among the elderly, who are especially vulnerable.

Despite the increase, just five individuals died from Covid on Tuesday and two on Monday, according to government figures.

‘Everyone I know has a fever,’ says Covid when he arrives in China.
As a result, WHO emergencies chief Dr Ryan has urged China to disclose more information on the virus’s new outbreak.

“In China, what has been published is a relatively low number of patients in ICUs, but anecdotally, ICUs are filling up,” he said.

“We’ve been stressing for weeks that this highly infectious virus was always going to be extremely difficult to entirely eradicate with only public health and social measures.”

During a weekly news conference in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed “great concern” about the evolving situation in China.

He requested particular information on disease severity, hospital admissions, and critical care needs.

According to Dr. Ryan, “vaccination is the exit strategy” for coronavirus outbreaks.

China has created and produced its own vaccinations, which have been proved to be less efficient than mRNA vaccines in protecting people against major Covid disease and death.

His remarks come as the German government revealed on Wednesday that the first batch of BioNTech Covid-19 vaccinations had been shipped to China.

The German immunizations will first be provided to approximately 20,000 foreigners in China.

It is the first foreign Covid-19 vaccine to be delivered to China, albeit no specifics on the time or magnitude of the delivery have been revealed.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz lobbied for the vaccination to be made freely available to Chinese citizens during a visit to Beijing last month.