reported the newspaperFinancial TimesChinese medical personnel have warned the leader, Xi Jinping, that the country’s health system is “not ready” to deal with any massive COVID-19 outbreak in the event of an inevitable departure from anti-epidemic rules.
The British newspaper indicated that the warning was delivered to the Chinese leader by dozens of health workers, including doctors, nurses and local government health officials.
The paper did not mention how Chinese medical personnel delivered the warning to the country’s president, but said it had interviewed some of them this month.
“The medical system is likely to be crippled in the face of mass cases,” said a doctor at a public hospital in central China’s Wuhan, which has been the center of the Covid outbreak.
Nearly three years into the epidemic, China’s health care system is even more strained than it was to begin with, as meager funding, staffing and medical resources have been redirected towards epidemic control rather than preparations to treat the most vulnerable.
“In recent years, China’s health care system has been completely stuttering, putting all of its manpower, funding and support into COVID prevention and control,” said a health official in southern China’s Guangdong province.
“This is not sustainable. Unfortunately, the central government has not yet made any fundamental changes in the overall direction,” he added.
A nurse in a remote city in the southern province of Guangxi said smaller hospitals “lack the manpower or equipment” to handle the large influx of patients.
China implements a strict policy known as “Zero Covid”, which includes the complete closure of cities and residential suburbs, as well as strict quarantine requirements and the imposition of mass daily checks on the population, even though most countries in the world left them requirements imposed at the beginning of the spread of the disease.
While this policy has succeeded in halting the epidemic, it has also exacerbated problems in the health care system and left a large segment of the population deeply fearful of the coronavirus.
Last week, Beijing eased quarantine requirements for close contacts and international travellers, raising hopes for a broader relaxation of its “zero Covid” policy.
Experts said the policy meant China failed to prioritize building strong defenses against a large-scale outbreak, instead focusing its resources on containing it.
At the heart of the problem Beijing has created for itself is what many see as an inevitable “exit wave,” a rapid rise in infections as the country lifts its tough pandemic restrictions, according to the newspaper.
“The big threat in an exit wave is just the sheer number of cases in a short period of time,” said Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong.
“I would be reluctant to say that there is a scenario where the wave of exits does not cause problems for the health system. It is difficult to imagine,” he continued.
The number of official cases of COVID-19 patients in China has reached its highest level in six months, including a record number of infections in the capital Beijing and the manufacturing hub south of Guangzhou.
The situation is made worse by the lack of vaccination of the elderly against the Coronavirus, given that only 40 percent of the elderly over 80 have received 3 doses of the vaccine.
Hong Kong University virologist Jin Dongyan said Chinese hospitals could be overwhelmed by an influx of unvaccinated elderly patients if a large-scale outbreak of the virus occurs.
