Some hospitals in China overwhelmed in national COVID-19 wave

Yao Ruyan paced frantically outside a fever clinic at a county hospital in China’s industrial Hebei province, 70 kilometers southwest of Beijing. His mother-in-law has COVID-19 and needs urgent medical attention, but all nearby hospitals are full.

“They said there are no beds in here,” she hung up the phone.

As China struggles with its first nationwide wave of COVID-19, emergency wards in small towns and cities southwest of Beijing are overwhelmed. Emergency rooms refuse ambulances, relatives of sick people search for open beds, and patients collapse on benches in hospital corridors and sleep on the floor because there are no beds.

Yao’s elderly mother-in-law fell ill a week ago with the coronavirus. He went first to a local hospital, where a lung scan showed signs of pneumonia. But the hospital cannot handle serious cases of COVID-19, Yao said. He was directed to a larger hospital in a nearby county.

As Yao and her husband drove from hospital to hospital, they found all the wards full. Zhuozhou Hospital, an hour’s drive from Yao’s hometown, is the latest disappointment.

Yao runs to the check-in counter, wheelchairs past elderly patients in a panic. But again, he was told that the hospital was full, and he would have to wait.

‘Fear’ because of the parents’ situation

“I’m angry,” Yao said, crying as she held up a lung scan from a local hospital. “I’m not very hopeful. We’ve been out for a long time and I’m scared because he’s having trouble breathing.”

Over the course of two days, Associated Press reporters visited five hospitals and two crematoriums in cities and towns in Baoding and Langfang prefectures, in central Hebei province. The region was the epicenter of China’s first outbreak after the country eased its control of COVID-19 in November and December. For weeks, the area has been deserted, as people get sick and stay at home.

Many of them are now healed. Today, markets are bustling, restaurants are packed and cars are honking in snarling traffic, even as the virus spreads to other parts of China. In recent days, headlines in state media say that the region is “starting to start a normal life.”

But life in the emergency ward and crematorium of central Hebei is not normal. Even as young people return to work and the lines at fever clinics ease, many Hebei elders are critical. While dealing with intensive care units and funeral homes, it may be a harbinger of what is to come in the rest of China.

The Chinese government has reported just seven COVID-19 deaths since restrictions were dramatically lifted on December 7, bringing the country’s total to 5,241. On Tuesday, Chinese health officials said the country only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, a narrow definition that excludes many deaths that would be caused by COVID-19 elsewhere.

Experts have estimated between one million and two million deaths in China by the end of next year, and a top World Health Organization official warned that Beijing’s method of counting would “underestimate the true death toll.”

In Baoding Hospital No. 2 in Zhuozhou, on Wednesday, a patient burst into the hallway of the emergency ward. The sick person breathes with the help of a respirator. A woman cries after a doctor tells her a loved one has died.

The emergency room was crowded, the ambulances were sent away. A medical worker shouted at relatives who were carrying patients from an arriving ambulance.

“There is no oxygen or electricity in this corridor,” the worker said. “If you can’t give him oxygen, how can you save him?

“If you don’t want to be late, turn around and get out quickly,” he said.

The relatives left, lifting the patient back to the ambulance. It took off, the lights flashed.

In two days of driving through the area, AP reporters passed about 30 ambulances. On one of the highways to Beijing, two ambulances followed each other, lights flashing, while a third passed in the opposite direction. Dispatchers have been overwhelmed, with Beijing city officials reporting a six-fold increase in emergency calls earlier this month.

Employees say the crematorium is struggling to cope

Several ambulances are going to the funeral home. At the Zhuozhou crematorium, furnaces are burning overtime as workers struggle to cope with a surge in deaths in the past week, according to one employee. A funeral shop worker estimated that they were burying 20 to 30 bodies a day, up from three to four before the COVID-19 measures were lifted.

“There are a lot of people who have died,” said Zhao Yongsheng, a worker at a funeral goods store near a local hospital. “They work day and night, but they can’t burn it all.”

At the crematorium in Gaobeidian, about 20 kilometers south of Zhuozhou, the body of an 82-year-old woman was brought from Beijing, a two-hour drive away, because funeral homes in the Chinese capital were overcrowded, according to the woman’s granddaughter, Liang. .

“They said they have to wait 10 days,” Liang said, giving only her name because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Liang’s grandmother had not been vaccinated, Liang added, when she developed symptoms of the coronavirus, and had spent her last days hooked to a respirator in a Beijing ICU.

Over two hours at the Gaobeidian crematorium on Thursday, AP reporters saw three ambulances and two vans unloading bodies. About a hundred people gathered, some dressed in traditional white Chinese clothing. They burn funeral papers and light fireworks.

“There are many,” a worker said when asked about the number of COVID-19 deaths, before funeral director Ma Xiaowei entered and took reporters to meet local government officials.

As officials listened, Ma confirmed there were more cremations, but said he did not know if COVID-19 was involved. He blamed the extra deaths on winter.

“Every year this season, there’s another one,” Ma said. “The pandemic has not been reflected” in the death toll, he said, as the official listened and nodded.

‘Everything is under control,’ the official said

Although anecdotal evidence and models suggest many people have been infected and died, some Hebei officials deny the virus has had much of an impact.

“There is no such thing as an explosion in cases, everything is under control,” said Wang Ping, administrative manager of Gaobeidian Hospital, speaking at the main gate of the hospital. “There is a slight drop in patients.”

Wang said only six of the hospital’s 600 beds were occupied, but did not allow AP reporters inside. Two ambulances arrived at the hospital within half an hour of reporters’ arrival, and the patient’s relatives told AP that they were turned away from the Gaobeidian emergency ward because it was full.