New Delhi: While China grapples with surging COVID cases, the country is also witnessing its health infrastructure under a lot of strain with death tolls reportedly rising among the elderly who are at risk of contracting severe infection.
"Fever meds in short supply, hospitals overwhelmed, blood shortage, death tolls soaring among the elderly, morgues overflown with body bags --Why China has a man-made crisis after "sudden reopening"," wrote senior journalist Wang Xiangwei.
He also shared a purported video of the hospital morgue.
ABP could not independently check the veracity of the video.
According to the journalist, Chinese officials and state media are struggling to put a positive spin on the decision to end the zero-Covid policy. "They have argued that the country’s draconian coronavirus suppression measures which basically isolated itself from the rest of the world over the past three years had won the population of 1.4 billion valuable life-saving time," he wrote in a report published on his own substack portal.
"The latest Omicron variants may be highly contagious but the symptoms they caused are mild, as they tried to reshape public perception of the virus, which until last month was labelled serious and deadly in the official narrative to justify the zero-Covid policies," the journalist, who also writes for South China Morning Post, mentioned.
According to him, the Chinese establishment is attempting to portray that the sudden reopening was planned.
As hospitals and emergency services are overwhelmed and there is an acute blood shortage in many cities with morgues and funeral parlors filled with bodies, China is underprepared for the situation emerging from ending Covid curbs, as per the report.
According to Wang Xiangwei, while protests are one of the reasons for China doing a 180-degree about-face on its zero-Covid policies, "the underlying issue is that China’s leaders have finally comprehended the magnitude of the devastating impact on the economy."
He further mentioned that China prioritising prevention instead of treatment was behind the lack of preparation for the reopening.