China’s rural areas must ensure “medicine supplies” on the eve of the Lunar New Year, when a surge in Covid-19 cases is expected, the country’s National Health Commission said.
“Supplies should cover the entire period of high number of displacements,” explained the director of the Department of Medical Affairs of the National Health Commission, Jiao Yahui, in an interview with state television CCTV.
The number of Covid-19 cases rose rapidly in China after the country abolished the ‘zero cases’ policy. The spate of winter cases is expected to be exacerbated by the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls in the last week of January. The main celebration of Chinese families, equivalent to Christmas in Western countries, traditionally records the largest internal migration on the planet, with hundreds of millions of Chinese returning to their homeland.
Jiao urged rural areas to prepare so that “severely ill people can at least be transferred to a municipal hospital.”
The wave of infections by the new coronavirus will have already reached its peak in the country’s large cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or Chongqing, but it has not yet reached rural areas, according to a recent study led by experts from the Center for Public health. from Shanghai
The State Council (Executive) already asked, in the middle of last month, local governments to give priority to health services in rural areas “to protect the population”, pointing out the “relative scarcity of health resources”.
In early December, Chinese authorities ended a nearly three-year Covid-19 “zero case” policy, which included mass testing, quarantine in facilities designated for positive cases and direct contacts, the use of contacts, and lockdown. from the country’s borders.
The relaxation of restrictions preceded an unprecedented wave of infections in China, which caused great hospital pressure in several cities.
Some voices in the country criticized the lack of preparation of the authorities, before putting an end to the ‘covid zero’ policy, which caused shortages of medicines for fever and problems accessing medical care.
Jiao assured that the National Health Commission “made preparations” since “beginning of December 2022”, and that it required hospitals to increase intensive care beds.
The rapid spread of the virus in the country cast doubt on the reliability of official figures, which reported only a few recent deaths from the disease, despite localities and provinces estimating that a significant proportion of their population had been infected.
The World Health Organization recently said it was “very concerned” about the evolution of covid-19 in China and demanded “more information”. Beijing responded that it has been sharing its data “in an open, timely and transparent manner” since the start of the pandemic.
The British company Airfinity, which analyzes data from the health sector, estimated that China currently suffers some 9,000 deaths a day from the new coronavirus.
As of January 8, Covid-19 will cease to be a category A disease in China, the highest level of danger, to become a category B disease, which includes less control, thus marking the practical end of the policy ‘covid zero’, dismantled by the authorities after the occurrence of protests in several cities of the country.
Source: TSF
