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Shanghai (AFP) โ Coughing, groaning and gasping for breath, elderly Covid patients packed the corridors of hospitals in Shanghai on Tuesday as a wave of Covid-19 cases swept through the Chinese megacity.
At two hospitals in the city, AFP journalists saw hundreds of patients, mostly elderly, lying on gurneys in public areas as emergency rooms filled beyond capacity.
Wrapped in blankets, coats and wool caps, many were hooked up to intravenous drips, heart monitors or oxygen tanks, visibly struggling to breathe. Some seemed not to fully respond.
At a hospital, AFP witnessed an exchange between a woman and an older man, both competing for a drip.
"I was here first," he said. "I'm here to get a needle too."
Beijing last month swiftly demolished key pillars of its zero-covid policy, scrapping lockdowns, mass testing and statewide quarantines in a matter of days.
The rollback of three years of hardline restrictions brought relief across the country, but unleashed a torrent of infections in the country's patchy healthcare system and overburdened funeral homes and crematoriums.
Even in Shanghai, one of China's wealthiest cities, the crisis is acute. About 70 percent of the megacity's population, equivalent to around 18 million people, may have contracted covid since last month, according to state media reports.
suffering in public
In a waiting room at Huashan Hospital, located a stone's throw from the site of anti-lockdown protests in November, a woman bent over a sick man in his 80s, a profusion of tubes sprouting from his emaciated hand.
Nearby, a young man stood guard over the bed of another elderly patient, protecting him from the crowd of people walking by.
At Tongren Hospital in the west of the city, a middle-aged woman wearing a face mask gently held a vial to the parched lips of a man attached to an oxygen cylinder.
Nearby, a medical worker wearing a blue gown and sun visor tended to a gray-haired woman in a red sweater as she shivered under a thick blanket.
Doctors and nurses at hospitals in several cities told AFP that they continued to treat patients despite testing positive for the virus themselves.
In Shanghai, many also forged ahead, letting out the occasional hacking cough as they went from patient to patient.
China's National Health Commission announced last month that it would no longer publish daily case figures, and a separate tally by the country's disease control body is considered inaccurate now that testing mandates have been lifted.
The country has also narrowed the definition of what counts as a Covid death in a move that some experts say will underestimate the true number of deaths from the disease.
ยฉ 2023 AFP
