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Managers at Xiangfu Nursing Home, a high-end retirement facility in Shanghai’s Changning district, are struggling to keep up with the sudden end of China’s Covid-zero policy. Their simple solution now: close the door.
To buy time as the virus spread rapidly across the country, the prime minister banned the entry of relatives and other visitors in late November. Staff members who have completed their shifts cannot leave and must sleep on site.
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The same is happening across China, as undervaccinated elderly people suddenly find themselves surrounded by infections after three years of little threat. In cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, local governments are implementing the same closed-loop system for nursing homes that factories employed during earlier outbreaks. No one comes and no one goes.
time is limited. Evidence from around the world shows that nursing homes tend to have the highest number of deaths, which is why countries are prioritizing vaccinations for nursing home residents.
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This is not the case in China, where 38,000 households provide beds for 8.2 million seniors, according to 2020 figures. Only 42% of people over the age of 80 received booster injections. That is well below the level at which other countries have reopened after abandoning stringent measures against the virus.
“This is just the beginning of a really difficult period,” Shanghai Pudong Nan Nursing Home wrote in a statement this week explaining its new rules. “We are scared when experts say 80-90% of the population will eventually be infected!”
China’s ‘going with the flow’ approach to fighting coronavirus baffles experts
Officials from the National Health Commission last week offered preliminary advice to nursing homes with possible outbreaks of the virus. Minimize the risk of infection by improving ventilation, practicing hand hygiene, wearing a mask, and avoiding gatherings. They also urged older adults to get vaccinated, rather than mandatory shots.
Convincing older people proved to be a difficult task. Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, said many older Chinese are reluctant to get vaccinated. Forcing them to be vaccinated could spark a backlash in a society that has traditionally emphasized respect for older people, he said.
“It’s a huge gamble,” Wang said. “If the elderly resist, I’m sure the nurses, local neighborhood committees and officials are unwilling to force the elderly to be vaccinated.”
The price of this hesitation can be high. China could see about 5 million hospitalizations and as many as 700,000 deaths after abandoning Covid Zero, said Sam Fazeli, chief pharmaceutical analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
When the omicron raged through Hong Kong earlier this year, unvaccinated residents of care facilities were responsible for the thousands of ensuing deaths.
How Hong Kong went from zero Covid outbreaks to the world’s deadliest outbreak
At Xiangfu in Shanghai, employees are getting ready for long-term work.
“In the face of the raging epidemic, we must remain vigilant and respond to the government’s call at any time to ensure that the epidemic is under control and the elderly are safe,” Xiang Fu said in a statement.
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