Experts have forecast China will eventually experience a million to 2 million deaths over 2023
By Lawrence Richard
China’s ongoing battle with a COVID surge has completely devastated the country’s healthcare infrastructure, especially in the Hebei province.
Hospitals in Baoding and Langfang have been forced to turn away ambulances and ill patients seeking treatment, while health administrators have been required to treat patients in over-capacity intensive care units on benches or the floor, officials said.
“I don’t have much hope,” said Yao Ruyan, whose elderly mother-in-law requires urgent medical care as she contracted the coronavirus. However, Yao has been unable to find a hospital with room to treat her, the Associated Press reported.
“They say there are no beds here,” she told AP reporters outside a fever clinic in China’s Hebei province.
Yao and her husband said they have been met with the same response at each hospital: there is no room for another patient. After the family drove to Zhuozhou Hospital, which is an hour’s drive from Yao’s hometown, the response was the same.
“I’m furious,” a tearful Yao added. “We’ve been out for a long time and I’m terrified because she’s having difficulty breathing.”
And the problem exists for more than just Yao.
An ICU at Baoding No. 2 Hospital in Zhuozhou was so crowded that a medical worker instructed people wheeling in a patient from an arriving ambulance to seek care elsewhere.
“There’s no oxygen or electricity in this corridor!” the worker shouted, as the Associated Press reported. “If you can’t even give him oxygen, how can you save him?”
“If you don’t want any delays, turn around and get out quickly!” the worker added.
The region’s crematoriums have echoed similar complaints.
Furnaces are burning continuously at the Zhuozhou crematorium as staff members struggle to keep up with an increase in deaths, an employee told the Associated Press.
Before the Chinese government dramatically loosened COVID-related restrictions on December 7, a funeral home employee estimated that they were burning 20 to 30 bodies per day, up from just three or four at the time.
An employee at a funeral home, Zhao Yongsheng, stated, “There have been so many deaths. Even though they try, they can’t burn them all.
The capital of China’s funeral homes were also crowded, forcing some people to travel for hours just to find someone who could cremate their deceased.
They told us we’d have to wait for 10 days, a resident who only gave his last name, Liang, said.
Only seven COVID-19 deaths have been reported by the Chinese government since restrictions were loosened on December 7, but the outlook for China’s fight against COVID is bleak in the absence of a solution to provide prompt and adequate care.
Only 5,241 COVID deaths have been officially reported in China since the global outbreak started in the final months of 2019. For context, more than 1.1 million people have officially died in the US.
Modeling suggests large numbers of people will continue getting infected and dying throughout Beijing and the rest of China.
Experts have forecast China will eventually experience a million to 2 million deaths over the next year, and the World Health Organization has said Beijing’s way of counting COVID-caused deaths has allowed the country to “underestimate the true death toll.”
A Chinese health official said as recently as Tuesday that China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID death toll, disregarding deaths that would be attributed to COVID BS counted by countries that use a broader definition.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
