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Chinese hospitals ‘very busy’ as Covid spreads unchecked | World News

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Chinese hospitals were under intense pressure on Wednesday as a surge in COVID-19 infections strained medical resources, while the scale of the outbreak and doubts about official figures prompted some countries to consider new travel rules for Chinese tourists.

China’s abrupt policy change, which this month began lifting the world’s strictest COVID lockdown and widespread testing regime, puts its battered economy on track to fully reopen next year.

Some international health experts say the lifting of restrictions after widespread protests against them means the spread of COVID is largely unchecked and could infect millions of people every day.

The speed at which China rolled back COVID rules, the last major country in the world to treat the virus as endemic, has overwhelmed its fragile health system.

China reported three new COVID-related deaths on Tuesday, up from one on Monday — a figure at odds with what the country with a much smaller population has experienced since it reopened.

Staff at West China Hospital, a major hospital in the southwestern city of Chengdu, said they had been “very busy” caring for COVID patients since restrictions were eased on Dec. 7.

“I’ve been doing this job for 30 years and it’s the busiest I’ve ever known,” said an ambulance driver outside the hospital, who asked not to be named.

On Tuesday night, queues formed both inside and outside the hospital’s emergency room and at nearby fever clinics. Most of those who arrived by ambulance were given oxygen to help them breathe.

“Nearly all of the patients had COVID-19,” said an emergency room pharmacy worker.

She said the hospital did not have a stock of COVID-specific medicines and could only provide medicines for symptoms such as coughs.

Zhang Yuhua, head of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, said that most of the recent patients are elderly critically ill patients with underlying diseases. She said the number of patients receiving emergency care had risen to 450-550 a day, from about 100 previously, according to state media.

The fever clinic at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing was also “crowded” with gray-haired patients, state media reported.

Nurses and doctors were called to work, while sick and retired medical staff in rural communities were rehired to help. Some cities have struggled to secure supplies of fever-reducing medicines.

Images published by the state-run China Daily showed rows of mostly elderly patients in the hospital’s intensive care unit being treated by medical staff in white protective suits, some breathing through oxygen tubes.

read more: Passport and visa updates from China as Covid restrictions ease

Chinese authorities said this week that the country would no longer require incoming travelers to quarantine from Jan. 8, a major step toward freer travel that has prompted many Chinese long isolated from the world to check travel platforms .

But while online searches for flights soared from extremely low levels on Tuesday, residents and travel agents say it will be months before they recover given COVID concerns and people spending more cautiously due to the impact of the pandemic to a normal state.

Additionally, some governments are considering additional travel requirements for Chinese tourists.

U.S. officials cited “a lack of transparent data, including data on the genome sequence of the virus” as a reason for doing so.

India and Japan will require travelers from mainland China to have a negative COVID test, while those who test positive in Japan must undergo a week of quarantine. Tokyo also plans to restrict airlines from increasing flights to China.

The Philippines’ transportation secretary said on Wednesday that the Philippines should be “extremely cautious” in receiving incoming travelers from China, adding that the country was considering imposing testing requirements.

Asked about the travel requirements imposed by Japan and India, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that “coronavirus measures should be scientific and appropriate and should not affect the normal movement of people”.

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