Due to a lack of staff, it appears that frontline medical personnel is being instructed to report even if they are infected themselves. A Chinese professor at Yale University in the United States who specialises in health policy has been keeping an eye on the issue in his native country.
According to Chen Xi’s statement to the media, he has been discussing the severe systemic pressures with hospital administrators and other medical personnel in China.
He claimed, “People who’ve been infected have been required to work in the hospitals which creates a transmission environment there.”
In an effort to handle the massive number of patients, China’s hospitals hurriedly boosted the capacity of their fever wards, but these are swiftly filling up due in part to the persistent messaging that it is okay to stay at home if you contract the virus.
Prof. Chen claims that explaining this to the public requires considerably more work. According to him “There is no culture of staying at home for minor symptoms, “When people feel sick they all go to hospitals, which may easily crash the healthcare system.”
Significant statewide shortages of drugs used to treat the flu or the common cold have been caused by a rush on pharmacies. Covid-19 home test kits are similarly difficult to locate.
Even if Beijing’s restaurants are now permitted to reopen, there aren’t many people eating there, and the city’s streets are peaceful.
Although many employees are being told by their employers that they should go back to work, they don’t want to.
All of this makes sense when you remember that, only a few weeks ago, the government was adamant that zero-Covid would not be deviated from, that individuals who were sick must attend to centralised quarantine centres, and that lockdowns were essential.
The coronavirus was a threat, and Chinese residents were fortunate to call this country home since the Communist Party would not sacrifice them in the name of globalisation. Now that the objective of bringing every epidemic to zero cases has been dropped, Covid-19 is spreading rapidly and the official government stance is that contracting this disease is nothing to be concerned about.
Then there were street protests in numerous cities, with protesters calling for the restoration of their former lives they desired to regain their freedom of movement. The call for China’s leader Xi Jinping to step down and for the Communist Party to cede power was raised as police clashed with protesters. This was the tipping point that caused zero-Covid to snap.
It was anticipated that China would ease its Covid restrictions considerably more gradually and slowly.
