China grapples with COVID surge by Health & Fitness Journal

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©Health & Fitness Journal. Women wearing face masks and face shields speak on a street amid ongoing outbreaks of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Shanghai, China, 12 December 2022. REUTERS/Aly Song 2/4

By Eduardo Baptista and Sophie Yu

BEIJING (Health & Fitness Journal) – People queued outside fever clinics in China’s hospitals on Monday to check if they had COVID-19, a new sign of the rapid spread of symptoms after authorities began dismantling strict measures against the disease.

Three years into the pandemic, China is slowly moving to adjust to a world that has largely opened up to life with COVID and made a sea change in policy last Wednesday after unprecedented protests against its suffocating curbs.

It has halted testing ahead of many activities, restricted quarantine and is preparing on Monday to shut down a mobile app used to track the travel histories of a population of 1.4 billion people.

But with China’s little exposure to a disease that has been largely kept in check, analysts say China is ill-prepared for a wave of infections that could put pressure on its fragile healthcare system and bring businesses to a halt.

“I’m really scared of getting infected because the number of infected people is gradually increasing in Beijing,” an 18-year-old student surnamed Tan told Health & Fitness Journal as he walked down a street in the capital’s upscale Chaoyang district.

“But I have to get out today and do some errands,” he added. “I delayed going outside for three weeks because of COVID.”

Elsewhere in the district, which is home to foreign embassies and corporate headquarters, about 80 people huddled outside a fever clinic in the cold as ambulances drove by.

Health & Fitness Journal saw similar queues outside clinics in downtown Wuhan, where COVID-19 first emerged three years ago.

The number of patients waiting to be admitted to emergency and fever clinics is growing, a doctor working in a respiratory unit at a Beijing hospital was quoted as saying by the state-backed Global Times newspaper on Sunday.

Local cases have been falling in recent weeks since a peak of 40,052 in late November, official figures show. Sunday’s number of 8,626 was down from 10,597 new cases the previous day.

But the numbers reflect the drop in testing requirements, analysts say, while Chinese health expectations have warned of an impending surge.

In an op-ed Monday in the state-backed Shanghai Securities News, Zhang Wenhong, head of a team of experts at the trade hub, said the current outbreak could peak in a month, although the end of the pandemic could take three to six months.

Signs that the virus was raging in communities were widespread in cities like Beijing and Wuhan.

“Please protect yourself,” the administration of a condominium in the capital’s Dongcheng district urged residents on Sunday, adding that almost all employees were infected.

“Try not to go out as much as you can…” the messaging app WeChat said. “Be the first to take responsibility for your own health, let’s do this together.”

The prevalence of such fears has caused some people to avoid crowded places or indoor dining.

As a result, few analysts expect a quick and broad recovery in spending in the world’s second largest economy, as uncertainty tempered cheering over abrupt easing among consumers and businesses.

Still, China is pushing ahead with efforts to facilitate nationwide travel, though overseas travel may still take a while.

A state-mandated mobile app that identifies travelers in COVID-hit areas will be shut down at midnight Monday, according to a notice on its official WeChat account.

The number of available domestic flights across China surpassed 7,400, nearly doubling a week ago, flight tracker app VariFlight showed.