'Overwhelmed': China's stretched health system grapples with soaring Covid cases • FRANCE 24

These are scenes that have not been seen in China since 2020. In recent days, Shanghai emergency rooms have been

overwhelmed

. Health care workers convert hallways into treatment rooms to care for as many patients as possible. Most are elderly and require respiratory assistance. Weeks after the end of the strict zero-concealment policy, the country is now facing an unprecedented wave of the virus outside the hospital. This woman doesn't know where to take her sick husband. I have no strength left. Her fever doesn't go down. Can. Don't stay here, there are no beds, there are very few doctors in this hospital and they are

overwhelmed

.

Shanghai authorities have set up some 2,600 fever clinics to cope with the surge, with the number of patients increasing by 20 in just a few. days I am prescribing anti-inflammatory medications to treat their symptoms doctors reassure patients who are very worried about covert 19. In the middle of the night I started to feel pain everywhere and this morning I have a fever. Frightened, the streets of China's economic capital are once again deserted and the few who venture out can barely recognize their city. It is clear that the epidemic is serious. Many people work from home. Others are sick. That's why the city is like this.

Chinese

health

officials estimate that some 37 million people were caught undercover in a single day this week, contributing to the 248 million

cases

recorded since the beginning of the month, or almost a fifth of the population. China.