BEIJING, Dec 26 (Reuters) – In more than three decades of emergency medicine, Beijing resident Dr. Howard Bernstein said he had never seen anything like it.
Patients arrive at your hospital in ever-increasing numbers; almost all are elderly and many are very unwell with symptoms of COVID and pneumonia, he said.
Bernstein’s account mirrors similar testimonies from medical staff across China who are struggling to cope after China’s abrupt U-turn on its previously strict COVID policies this month was followed by a wave of infections in the whole country
It is by far the country’s largest outbreak since the pandemic began in the central city of Wuhan three years ago. Beijing’s government hospitals and crematoria have also been struggling this month amid high demand.
“The hospital is overwhelmed from top to bottom,” Bernstein told Reuters at the end of a “stressful” shift at the privately owned Beijing United Family Hospital east of the capital.
“The ICU is full,” as well as the emergency department, fever clinic and other wards, he said.
“A lot of them were admitted to the hospital. They’re not getting better in a day or two, so there’s no flow and so people are still coming to the ER, but they can’t get up to the rooms of the ‘hospital,’ he said. said “They’ve been stuck in the ER for days.”
Last month, Bernstein went from never treating a patient with COVID to seeing dozens a day.
“The biggest challenge, honestly, is that I don’t think we were ready for it,” he said.
Sonia Jutard-Bourreau, 48, medical director of the private Raffles Hospital in Beijing, said the number of patients is five to six times normal levels and the average age of patients has soared to about 40 years up to 70 in the space of a week.
“It’s always the same profile,” he said. “This is because most patients have not been vaccinated.”
Patients and their families visit Raffles because local hospitals are “overwhelmed,” he said, and because they want to buy Paxlovid, the Pfizer-made COVID treatment that many places, including Raffles, are running out of.
“They want the drug as a replacement for the vaccine, but the drug does not replace the vaccine,” Jutard-Bourreau said, adding that there are strict criteria for when her team can prescribe it.
An employee works on the production line of an anti-fever medicine at a plant in Guizhou Bailing amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Anshun, Guizhou Province, Dec. 24, 2022. cnsphoto via Reuters
Jutard-Bourreau, who like Bernstein has been working in China for about a decade, fears that the worst of this wave in Beijing is yet to come.
Elsewhere in China, medical staff told Reuters that resources are already stretched to breaking point in some cases, as levels of COVID and illness among staff have been particularly high.
A nurse based in the western city of Xian said 45 of the 51 nurses in her department and all emergency department staff have contracted the virus in recent weeks.
“There are so many positive cases among my colleagues,” said the 22-year-old nurse, surnamed Wang. “Almost all doctors are wrong.”
Wang and nurses at other hospitals said they have been told to report to duty even if they test positive and have a mild fever.
Jiang, a 29-year-old nurse in a psychiatric ward at a hospital in Hubei province, said staff attendance has dropped by more than 50 percent in her ward, which has stopped accepting new patients She said she works 16+ hour shifts without enough support.
“I worry that if the patient seems agitated, you have to contain them, but you can’t easily do it alone,” he said. “It’s not a great situation to be in.”
“POLITICAL” MORTALITY RATE
Doctors who spoke to Reuters said they were most worried about the elderly, tens of thousands of whom could die, according to expert estimates.
More than 5,000 people are likely dying each day from COVID-19 in China, British health data firm Airfinity estimated, offering a stark contrast to Beijing’s official figures on the country’s current outbreak.
The National Health Commission did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the concerns raised by medical staff in this article.
China reported no deaths from COVID on the mainland in the six days through Sunday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday, even as crematoria faced rising demand.
China has narrowed its definition for classifying deaths as related to COVID-19, counting only those involving pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by COVID-19, raising eyebrows among global health experts.
“It’s not medicine, it’s politics,” Jutard-Bourreau said. “If they’re dying now with COVID it’s because of COVID. The death rate now is political numbers, not medical numbers.”
Additional reporting from the Beijing Press Room. Editing by Gerry Doyle
Our standards: the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.