Beijing reopens makeshift hospital amid Covid surge
BEIJING: Beijing on Sunday reopened a makeshift hospital last used during the Sars epidemic in 2003 and set aside 4,000 hospital beds amid the ongoing Covid outbreak in the city, which has led to tightening of social distancing rules and banning of restaurant dining.
Beijing began fresh rounds of mass testing on Sunday with the residents of Chaoyang district, the city’s most populous and worst-hit district, queuing up for their fourth round in less than a week.
Beijing also shut down the Universal Studios theme park and ordered residents to provide proof of a negative Covid test to enter public venues in what seems to be pre-emptive curbs as case numbers remain low.
In Shanghai, some residents were allowed to venture out after the city reported a second day of zero infections outside quarantine areas. The city reported 788 confirmed locally transmitted Covid-19 cases and 7,084 local asymptomatic infection cases on Saturday, the municipal health commission said on Sunday.
It reported 37 new deaths on Saturday.
In Beijing, so far, about 4,000 beds have been reserved for Covid infections and more venues are being transformed into large-scale makeshift hospitals in case of need, Li Ang, deputy director of the Beijing municipal health commission, said.
Work on reconstructing Beijing’s Xiaotangshan Hospital began in January 2020 with the first wave of the Covid outbreak. The hospital was built in 2003 in a week to treat Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) patients but decommissioned in 2010.
“The makeshift hospitals are built to treat mild cases and asymptomatic carriers, which is an effective means to block the spread of the epidemic. It’s also vital to reduce overuse of medical resources and ensure that citizens get medical treatment in time,” said Li.
Li added that residents need not panic as there are currently “not so many patients in Beijing, but we should plan ahead”.
Beijing reported 51 locally transmitted confirmed cases and four asymptomatic cases on Sunday, local media reported.
Omicron sublineages evade antibodies: Study
BA.4 and BA.5 - New Omicron sublineages show an ability to evade antibodies from earlier infection and vaccination, a South African laboratory study has found.
Blood samples from people who had been infected with the original omicron variant saw an almost eightfold drop in neutralising antibody production when tested against the BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages, the study, led by the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa, showed.
Samples from people who were vaccinated showed about a threefold decrease, according to the study.