Coronavirus: China’s hospitals seem to be filling up – WHO – BBC

Hospitals in China appear to be filling up amid concerns about a fresh Covid-19 wave hitting the country, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

Dr Michael Ryan says intensive care units (ICU) are busy despite officials saying numbers are “relatively low”.

China figures show no-one died of Covid on Wednesday but there is scepticism about the disease’s real impact.

In recent days hospitals in Beijing and other cities have been filling up as the latest Covid surge hits China.

Since 2020, China has imposed strict health restrictions as part of its zero Covid policy .

But, the government ended most of those measures two weeks ago after landmark protests against the strict controls.

The number of cases has since soared, raising fears of a high mortality rate among the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable.

Despite the particular rise, the official figures show only five people died from Covid upon Tuesday and two on Monday.

It has led in order to WHO emergencies chief Dr Ryan urging China to provide more information about the latest spread of the virus.

He said: “In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling.

“We’ve been saying this for weeks that this particular highly infectious virus was always going to be very hard to stop completely, with just public health and social measures. ”

Speaking during a weekly news conference in Geneva THAT chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he is “very concerned over the evolving situation in China”.

This individual appealed for specific data on disease severity, hospital admissions and intensive care requirements.

Doctor Ryan added that “vaccination is the exit strategy” to coronavirus outbreaks.

China has developed plus produced its own vaccines, which have been shown to be less effective at protecting people against serious Covid illness and death than the mRNA vaccines used in much of the particular rest of the world.

His comments come as the German government announced on Wednesday it had sent its first batch of BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to The far east.

The German vaccines are to be administered initially to expats inside China – estimated to be about 20, 000.

It is the first foreign Covid-19 vaccine to be delivered to Tiongkok, although no details have been released about the particular time or the size of the delivery.

Last month during a visit to Beijing, Chancellor Olaf Scholz pressed for the shot to become made freely available to Chinese citizens as well.