China’s care homes rush to protect elderly from Covid-19 surge
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A medical worker administers the Covid-19 vaccine to an elderly resident at a community health service centre in Jinhua on Dec 5.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BEIJING – As Covid-19 spreads rapidly across China, elderly care homes are barricading their doors in an attempt to save their vulnerable patients.
In Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, local governments are enforcing on care homes the same closed-loop system that factories adopted during earlier outbreaks. No one comes, and no one goes. Staff are forced to live on site.
Time is running out. Evidence from around the world shows that facilities for seniors often see the biggest waves of deaths, which is why countries prioritised vaccinating care home occupants first.
That has not been the case in China, where 38,000 homes provide beds for 8.2 million seniors, according to 2020 data. Only 42 per cent of those aged over 80 have had booster shots. That is well below the levels seen in other countries that reopened after abandoning strict approaches toward the virus.
“It’s just the start of a real tough time,” read a statement from Pudong Shinan Nursing Home in Shanghai, explaining its new rules this week. “When the experts say 80 to 90 per cent of the population will eventually get infected, we are scared!”
National Health Commission officials last week gave rudimentary advice to care homes facing potential outbreaks of Covid-19: minimise the risk of infection by improving ventilation; practising hand hygiene; wearing masks; and avoiding gatherings. They also urged the elderly to get vaccinated, without making shots mandatory.
Persuading the elderly has proven to be a tough task. Many older Chinese are reluctant to get vaccinated, said Professor Feng Wang, at the University of California, Irvine. Forcing them to get vaccinated risks creating a backlash in a society that traditionally has emphasised respecting seniors, he said.
“It’s a tremendous gamble,” said Prof Wang. “If an elderly person resists, I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of reluctance among the nurses, the local neighbourhood committees and officials to force elderly people to take the vaccine.”
The cost of such hesitation may be large. China could see some 5 million people hospitalised and up to 700,000 deaths after abandoning its zero-Covid approach,
When the Omicron variant overwhelmed Hong Kong early in 2022, under-vaccinated residents at care facilities accounted for many of the thousands of deaths that followed.
At Xiangfu Nursing Home in Shanghai, staff are settling in for the long haul.
“Faced with menacing outbreaks, we have to remain alert and respond anytime to what the government calls for, to ensure Covid-19 control and safety of the elderly,” Xiangfu said in a statement. BLOOMBERG
