BEIJING - China still has sufficient critical care resources in reserve to cope with Covid-19 infections, despite the outbreak spreading rapidly across provinces, officials said.
As infections peak in provinces at different times, healthcare resources including doctors and nurses are being mobilised and distributed to where they are most needed, they said.
“In general, there is still a certain degree of redundancy in medical resources in China, that is, from the overall perspective of the country, our medical resources have not reached such a degree of tension,” Madam Jiao Yahui, head of medical policy at the National Health Commission, told reporters on Thursday.
Since it abandoned its long-held zero-Covid policy in early December, China has been swept up in a massive wave of infections which has overwhelmed hospitals in major cities from Beijing to Wuhan as medical workers themselves succumb to the virus. Spooked by the surge, several countries have imposed curbs on travellers from China.
The situation on the ground is grim. While the health authority’s definition of Covid-19 casualties – deaths caused only by respiratory failure inflicted by the virus – muddies the disease’s real impact, crematoriums have struggled to cope with the number of bodies taken there.
China has come under fire for under-reporting the death toll arising from the virus, but the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said on Thursday that a team is working on tabulating excess mortality, which it will make public.
Under World Health Organisation guidance, the measure of excess deaths refers to the difference between the number of deaths during a crisis and the expected death toll under normal circumstances. It is considered a more objective and comparable measure in assessing the impact of the pandemic, the global health body has said.
Regions such as Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Chengdu have passed their infection peaks, while municipalities and provinces like Shanghai, Chongqing, Anhui, Hubei and Hunan are at the height of the virus’ transmission, said Professor Wu.
But the outbreak may become “more complex” as a surge in human migration takes place close to Chinese New Year, amid the winter respiratory virus season, he warned.
Modelling done by various universities has pointed to a death toll of between 300,000 in the next three months and over two million in the next year if vaccination rates, critical care capacity and antiviral treatments are not boosted.
Health officials say occupancy of intensive care unit beds has not crossed the critical threshold of 80 per cent nationwide, even though some regions such as Beijing, Sichuan, Zhejiang and Hebei have neared or exceeded the threshold as they peaked earlier than other provinces.
Hospitals have been building capacity since the start of the pandemic, said Madam Jiao. Beijing has also announced plans to distribute Pfizer’s treatment drug Paxlovid to community health centres in the capital city.
Lines are still being spotted at fever clinics in Beijing, although pharmacies, which had been emptied out of their antiviral medication and antigen test kits nearly three weeks ago, have since restocked their supplies.
But life has largely returned to normal in the capital city as residents felled by the first wave of infections earlier this month recover and return to work. Restaurants have filled up, with many saying they are booked on New Year’s Eve, while traffic has become heavier than a week or two ago.
The surge in cases across China, which earlier this week announced it was reopening its borders from Jan 8, 2023, has worried an increasing number of countries, which have begun to put restrictions on travellers from China.
Japan, the United States, India and Italy said they would test passengers coming in from China, with US officials citing a lack of transparent data from Beijing as a justification for caution.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Thursday that countries should “take scientific and appropriate measures to prevent an outbreak, treat citizens of all countries equally, and should not affect normal personnel exchanges and cooperation”.
