(Beijing) China moved to free up hospital beds on Wednesday to save hospitals from potentially being overwhelmed by an outbreak of Omicron cases that has already locked down tens of millions of people.
Posted at 9:23 a.m.
The Ministry of Health has reported 3,290 new cases of COVID-19, including 11 serious, spread over about 20 provinces. This is a significant drop from Tuesday.
Several confinements have already been decreed, in particular in the province of Jilin (northeast), where a large part of the cases have been identified, and in the technological metropolis of Shenzhen (south), populated by 17.5 million inhabitants.
If these figures are very low compared to many foreign countries, they are high for China, where the authorities are adopting a zero COVID-19 strategy, which aims to limit the occurrence of new cases as much as possible.
These localized confinements, these quarantines and this advanced tracing of movements, if they have affected the economy, have made it possible to protect the population. The last death from COVID-19 officially dates from the beginning of 2021.
Until now, China sent patients who tested positive to hospitals.
But the Ministry of Health indicated on Tuesday evening that mild cases will now follow a simple quarantine. “For patients with […] the Omicron variant, these are mostly asymptomatic infections and mild cases. Most of them do not require very extensive treatment,” the ministry said.
“Admit them to hospitals […] would consume a lot of our medical resources. »
China wants to avoid finding itself in the same situation as in its semi-autonomous region of Hong Kong (south), where hospitals are overwhelmed by an outbreak of cases.
Footage broadcast by state broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday showed dozens of cranes assembling temporary hospitals in Jilin, where more than 5,000 cases have been reported in the space of a week.
A total of 6,000 prefabricated hospital rooms have already been set up in the cities of Changchun and Jilin, the province’s namesake city, to cope with the dreaded influx of patients.
Schools closed
In Shanghai, the most populous city in China with 25 million inhabitants, health authorities continued Wednesday to carry out massive screening.
The Chinese economic capital has already closed schools and began this week to confine for 48 hours certain residential complexes having identified suspected cases or contact cases, the time to carry out these tests.
City officials said Wednesday they would also close and test an unspecified number of “key areas” in the coming days, implying an expansion of restrictions.
This recent epidemic outbreak in China is likely to have serious repercussions on the economy and global supply chains if it lasts.
The confinement of Shenzhen, a major industrial metropolis and headquarters of many companies in the technology sector, could in particular have consequences on production.
One of the main suppliers of the American giant Apple, the Taiwanese company Foxconn, however indicated on Wednesday that it had resumed part of its production in the city.
The capital Beijing, very little affected for the moment with only a handful of cases, recalled on Wednesday that it was prohibiting entry into its territory to any traveler from a place which has recorded cases during the last 14 days.