In the overwhelmed hospitals of Shanghai, the elderly sick with COVID overwhelm the emergency services. Three years after the appearance of the first global cases of coronavirus in its territory, China faces a wave of patients since the lifting of the measures of its “zero COVID” policy last month.
In Shanghai the health situation is especially critical. Approximately 70% of the population (that is, about 18 million people) would have contracted the virus, according to official media.
Different media outlets document hundreds of patients in hospitals, mostly elderly, lying on stretchers in the midst of saturated emergency services.
Faced with the influx of patients, doctors infected with COVID continue to work tirelessly, according to testimonies collected in hospitals across the country.
The authorities acknowledge that the magnitude of the epidemic is “impossible” to determine, since coronavirus detection tests are no longer mandatory and the data is fragmented.
In a short time the health system has been overwhelmed. Pharmacies lack fever-reducing medicines. The crematoriums cannot cope due to the excessive influx of bodies.
The National Health Commission (NHC), which has a ministerial character, stopped publishing daily figures for cases and deaths. Currently, it is the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that is in charge of that task, but starting next week it will only do it once a month.
Authorities also reviewed the criteria for attributing a death to COVID. Since early December, only 15 virus-related deaths have been recorded in the country of 1.4 billion people.
