Desperate Measures: With 25 million COVID cases likely next week in Shanghai, China rehires retired doctors

Beijing: Hospitals running out of beds, crematorium piled with bodies and pharmacies running out of fever medicines, this is the latest scenario of China after Xi Jinping abruptly lifted restrictions of zero-Covid policy earlier this month. Healthcare workers in Beijing are working on their toes to treat Covid infected patients. Cases in the country are largely due to the Omicron sub-variant BF.7 which is highly contagious, more immunologically evasive and therefore, has a greater transmissibility.

According to health experts, China is under the first of its three intense waves of Covid-19 that is expected to last till March 2023. Fearing more cases and deaths, a hospital in Shanghai has told its staff to prepare for a “tragic battle” with the virus.

25 million infections in Shanghai by next week

The hospital expects half of Shanghai’s 25 million people to get infected by the end of next week.

The Shanghai Deji Hospital, on Wednesday, posted on its WeChat account that estimated about 5.43 million positives in the city and that 12.5 million in China’s main commercial hub will get infected by the end of the year.

The private hospital with around 400 staff said, “This year’s Christmas Eve, New Year’s Day, and the Lunar New Year are destined to be unsafe.”

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“In this tragic battle, the entire Greater Shanghai will fall, and we will infect all the staff of the hospital! We will infect the whole family! Our patients will all be infected! We have no choice, and we cannot escape,” it added.

However, the post was no longer available on WeChat by Thursday afternoon.

According to a report by news agency Reuters, China has confirmed 389,306 cases with symptoms. Some experts say official infection numbers have become an unreliable guide as testing is not being done at a pace following the easing of restrictions.

Earlier this week, Airfinity, a British-based health data firm, said that Covid-19 infections in China are likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day, a “stark contrast” from official data.

Hospitals in China running out of doctors

The number of patients are beyond the number of doctors manning the healthcare system in China’s hospitals. Therefore, the government has rehired retired doctors to help treat patients in rural areas amid Covid-19 surge.

“My retirement left only two other doctors in my department who are currently very busy due to the rising number of patients. I had been working here for a very long time, about 40 years so. I know the health conditions of the patients here well and the hospital leadership has trust in me and asked me to continue my job here,” report by SCMP quoted a rehired doctor Xu Rong as saying.

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The Chinese government is rehiring doctors who have retired in the last five years.

Videos going viral from China show patients on ventilator, long queues outside doctors’ chamber, piles of bodies in morgue and crematorium is packed with corpse.

However, China has decided not to include Covid patients with underlying conditions in the official death toll.

“Our hospital is seeing more patients, many of whom with symptoms of influenza. The rehired doctors have helped overcome many difficulties. They help ensure timely treatment for the patients and solve our problems in efficiently receiving and arranging the patients,” the report quoted Cheng Yamei, head, Heping Town Hospital Wushan branch as saying.

After massive protests against strict mitigation measures, China began dismantling its ‘zero-COVID’ regime in the begging of this month. The restrictions allegedly took a great financial and psychological toll on China’s 1.4 billion people.

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