Beijing [China], February 1 (ANI): Hospitals in China are flooded with the sick and elderly during the Lunar New Year holiday. This comes despite the Chinese authorities reporting that the nation’s COVID wave is coming to an end, NTD News reported.
According to Chinese health officials, there was no infection "rebound" during last week’s travel surge in the country.
Hospitals in central Chinese provinces are, however, swarmed with patients, shows footage shared online.
GeoPolitica.info recently reported that China is facing a significant challenge in the form of COVID-19, due to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) "flawed and regressive containment policies and ineffective domestically produced vaccines."Many reports from China have suggested that hospitals in highly-populated cities, including Shanghai and Beijing are overflowing with patients despite officials claiming that the outbreak had peaked last month, as per the news report.
Without any plan, the Chinese government ended its "zero-COVID policy" which in its initial phases imposed stringent measures. In order to contain the spread of virus, China imposed "draconian lockdowns, stringent contact tracing as well as inhumane behaviour by party officials."Although China’s economy witnessed a significant downfall, caused by the restrictions imposed by the CCP, the measures announced by the Chinese government might have prevented deaths. They, however, left a huge percentage of its population without natural immunity from COVID-19, more so, as China’s home-grown vaccines were ineffective as a deterrent against the virus and they even failed to protect the people, according to GeoPolitica.info report.
China’s COVID-19 containment strategy has affected Chinese people and has caused major discontent among people in the country, as per the GeoPolitica.info report. According to the policy, the entire city needs to be put under lockdown even if a few cases emerge in the region. The World Health Organization has stated that such measures do not help in reducing the number of cases and negatively affect people’s livelihoods.
Voices Against Autocracy (VAA) recently reported that to keep China’s COVID death figures low, the Chinese government has besides censorship, implemented a change in rules and procedures to compel doctors to hide COVID-related mortalities or delay updating them on death certificates.
Authorities in China have also stopped adding to the official count, COVID deaths that have occurred outside hospitals.
China amid growing global pressure, revealed that around 60,000 COVID-related deaths were reported between early December and mid-December, 2022. The number is big considering that China maintained a death toll of around 5,000 since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to VAA, many felt the actual number was much higher and accused Beijing of underreporting. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged China for "more detailed" data as it expressed concerns over the under-representing of the severity of the viral outbreaks in the country. (ANI)
