Doctor Howard Bernstein of Beijing noted that
in his more than three decades of emergency medicine, he has never encountered
anything like this.
He added that patients are coming into his
hospital in ever-increasing numbers; practically all of them are elderly and
many are really ill with symptoms of COVID and pneumonia.
Bernstein's statement is consistent with
similar evidence from medical professionals across China who are struggling to
cope after China abruptly changed its previously tight COVID standards this
month, which was followed by an outbreak of diseases that spread across the
country.
Since the epidemic started in the country's
capital city of Wuhan three years ago, this outbreak is by far the largest to
have occurred there. In this month's high demand, Beijing's government
hospitals and crematoriums have also struggled.
At the conclusion of a "stressful"
shift at the privately run Beijing United Family Institution in the east of the
capital, Bernstein told Reuters that "the hospital is completely
overburdened from top to bottom."
He declared that the intensive care unit
(ICU), emergency room, fever clinic, and other wards were all filled.
"Many of them were given hospital
admissions. People keep going to the ER since there is no flow and they won't
get better in a day or two, but they can't get upstairs to the hospital rooms
because of the stairs "explained he. They have been kept in the ER for
days.
Bernstein seen hundreds of COVID patients
every day in the past month, up from none.
He admitted, "I think we were just
unprepared for this. That's the biggest problem, really."
The chief medical officer at the exclusive
Raffles Hospital in Beijing, Sonia Jutard-Bourreau, 48, said that patient
volumes are five to six times more than usual and that patients' average ages
have risen by nearly 40 years to over 70 in just the past week.
She claimed that local hospitals are
"overwhelmed" and that patients and their family members travel to
Raffles to purchase Paxlovid, a COVID medication made by Pfizer, which is in
short supply in numerous locations, including Raffles.
Jutard-Bourreau explained that there are
specific requirements for when her team can prescribe it, saying, "They
want the drug as a replacement of the vaccine, but the medicine does not
replace the vaccine."
Jutard-Bourreau, who like Bernstein has spent
about ten years working in China, is concerned that the worst of this wave has
not yet reached Beijing.
Medical professionals in other parts of China
told Reuters that due to exceptionally high COVID and sickness rates among
personnel, resources had already been strained in some situations.
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