Anxiety high amid virus shift in China

Fallout unclear as rules eased

BEIJING — A week after China dramatically eased some of the world’s strictest COVID-19 containment measures, uncertainty remained Thursday over the direction of the pandemic in the world’s most populous nation.

While there are no official indications yet of the massive surge of critically ill patients some feared, social media posts, business closures, and other anecdotal evidence suggest large numbers of people are being infected. In Beijing and elsewhere, there was a rush on cold medication and testing kits. Some hospital staff are staying home, while others are back to work after being infected.

Meanwhile, as people take to the Internet to share dubious “remedies,” various everyday products have seen sales skyrocket. A run on canned yellow peaches, seen as particularly nutritious, prompted one of the largest producers to write on social media that they are not medicine and that there is plenty of supply.

After years of trying to track the virus down to every last infection, the government now says that’s essentially impossible — but it’s not clear what that means for reporting the most serious cases.

While major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have invested heavily in health care, second- and thirdtier cities and communities in the vast rural hinterland have far fewer resources to deal with a major outbreak.

For a variety of economic and cultural reasons, Chinese tend to be more reliant than citizens of other countries on hospitals, even for illnesses that are not severe. The government has asked those with mild symptoms to recuperate at home, but if they don’t, that could lead to strains on the system, Yale professor of public health Xi Chen said.

“If people do not have such a culture to stay at home, to keep those resources for sicker people, then that could easily crash the system,” Chen said.

So far, Beijing has more than tripled the number of fever clinics to over 300, and those visited by Associated Press journalists

were generally calm and orderly, with few indications of overcrowding. A children’s hospital had 50 or 60 people waiting in line Wednesday afternoon, but three others had shorter queues. At one clinic in southern Beijing, a few elderly patients were put on IV drips, and one was inhaling pressurized oxygen.

Though the health care system in big cities appears to be holding up so far, Chen cautions

that it’s too soon to tell when cases will peak. The January Lunar New Year — when millions of people travel to visit family — is expected to present another challenge, Chen said.

“I’m concerned it could be a super-spreader event,” he said.

Winter is also a tough time to loosen restrictions, Chen said, as the virus circulates more easily.

Other concerns include boosting China’s elderly vaccination rate and bolstering the country’s intensive care capacity. Though most of China’s population is vaccinated, millions of older adults haven’t had a booster shot of the country’s domestically made vaccines. Studies show Chinese vaccines are effective in preventing hospitalization and death, but require at least three doses in order to be fully effective.

China says around 30 percent of people 60 or older have yet to get three shots.

On Wednesday, the government said it would offer a fourth shot to those in vulnerable groups.