Covid cases explode in Beijing, leaving city streets empty

Empty streets, deserted shopping malls and residents far from each other is the new normal in Beijing – but not because the city, like many Chinese cities before it, is under a “Covid zero” lockdown.

This time, it’s because Beijing has been hit by a significant and growing outbreak – the first time in the Chinese capital since the start of the pandemic, a week after leaders eased the country’s restrictive Covid policy.

The impact of the outbreak on the city was visible in the upscale commercial district of Sanlitun on Tuesday (13). There, the usually bustling shops and restaurants were without customers and, in some cases, running with minimal staff or offering takeout only.

Offices, stores and residential communities report staff shortages or changes in work arrangements as employees fall ill with the virus. Meanwhile, others stay at home to avoid getting infected.

A community worker told CNN that 21 of the 24 employees in his Beijing neighborhood committee office, tasked with coordinating residential affairs and activities, have fallen ill in recent days.

“As our superiors are mostly infected, there is not much work given to us,” said employee Sylvia Sun. “(The usual) events, lectures, presentations, activities between parents and children will definitely not be held.”

Beijing, which before the new rules already faced a small-scale outbreak, is now at the forefront of a new reality for China: since the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, Chinese cities have not dealt with an outbreak without robust measures in place. force.

But for a place that until earlier this month was assiduously tracking all cases, there is now no clear data on how far the virus has spread.

China’s new Covid rules have significantly reduced the testing requirements that once dominated everyday life, and residents have switched to using at-home antigen tests where available, leaving official numbers unreliable.

impossible to understand

On Wednesday (14), China’s National Health Commission (NHC) gave up trying to track all new cases of Covid, announcing that it would no longer include asymptomatic infections in its daily count. It had already reported such cases, albeit in a separate category of “confirmed” or symptomatic.

“It is impossible to accurately understand the actual number of asymptomatic infections,” the NHC said in a statement, citing reduced levels of official testing.

Authorities reported on Wednesday morning 2,249 symptomatic cases of Covid across the country the previous day, 20% of which were detected in the capital.

These numbers are also believed to be affected by the reduction in testing.

The report of CNN from Beijing indicates that the overall case count in the Chinese capital could be many times higher than reported.

In a Twitter post, Beijing lawyer and former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, James Zimmerman, said that about 90% of people in his office had Covid, up from half a few days ago.

“Our ‘work from home’ policy is now ‘work from home if you are well enough’. It happened like a runaway freight train,” he wrote on Wednesday.

Experts said the relatively low number of previously infected Covid-19 patients in China and the lower effectiveness of its widely used inactivated virus vaccines against omicron infection – compared to previous strains and mRNA vaccines – could allow the virus to spread quickly.

“Current strains will spread more quickly in China than in other parts of the world because those other parts of the world have some immunity against infections from earlier waves of earlier Omicron strains,” said University of Hong Kong professor of epidemiology Ben Hooded.

The impact

The extent of severe illness or death in Covid-19 outbreaks typically takes time to become clear, but there are signs of an impact on the health system – with Beijing authorities urging patients who are not seriously ill not to seek emergency help. Services.

The city’s main hospitals registered 19,000 patients with flu symptoms from Dec. 5 to 11 — more than six times the previous week, a health official said on Monday.

The number of patients visiting fever clinics was 16 times higher on Sunday than the week before. In China, where there is no strong primary care system, visiting the hospital is common for mild illnesses.

So far, however, there have been only 50 severe and critical cases in hospitals, most of which have underlying health problems, Sun Chunlan, China’s top official in charge of managing Covid, said during an inspection of Beijing’s epidemic response on Tuesday. -fair.

“Currently, the number of new infections in Beijing is increasing rapidly, but most of them are asymptomatic and mild cases,” said Sun, who also called for more fever clinics to be set up and ensured the supply of medicines – which have been hit by a increase in purchases in recent days – was being increased.

Prominent Shanghai physician Zhang Wenhong has warned that hospitals must do everything they can to ensure that health workers do not become infected as quickly as people in the communities they serve.

Such a situation could result in a shortage of medical personnel and infections among patients, he said, according to local media reports.

Concerns about shortages and access to medication and care have been palpable in public discussion, including on social media.

There, a Beijing-based reporter’s account of her time in a temporary hospital for treatment of Covid-19 set off a social media firestorm, with a related hashtag garnering more than 93 million views on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo since Monday.

Social media users questioned why the reporter, who showed her room with two beds and access to fever medicine in a video interview posted by her employer Beijing Radio and Television Station on Sunday, received such treatment while others were struggling.

“Incredible! A young reporter gets a place in a temporary hospital and takes liquid ibuprofen for children, hard to find for parents in Beijing,” read a sarcastic comment, which received thousands of likes.

Another popular response complained that “ordinary people” are staying at home with children and elderly people with high fevers.

“Could you give me (her) bed if I call (the hospital)?” asked the Weibo user.

Amid fears of the virus, residents rushed to buy canned peaches, following rumors that the vitamin C-rich snack could prevent or treat Covid. Since then, Chinese state media has warned people that pickled fruit is neither a Covid medicine nor a substitute for medicine.