Hospitals filling up fast, says WHO as China battles Covid spike
China has been witnessing a surge in coronavirus cases after lifting Covid restrictions
Raising concerns over rapid cases of Covid being detected in China, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that the hospitals are filling up fast in the country.
Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, told BBC on Wednesday that the intensive care units (ICU) have been running busy despite Beijing officials claiming that numbers are "relatively low".
Though no Covid deaths were reported on Wednesday, there have been doubts about the real impact of the virus.
Since the stringent Covid measures were lifted last week due to massive protests, China has been witnessing a surge in coronavirus cases.
"In China, what's been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up,” Ryan was quoted as saying.
"We've been saying this for weeks that this highly infectious virus was always going to be very hard to stop completely, with just public health and social measures."
It is being reported that the present surge in Covid infections in China is believed to be driven by the BF.7 —a sub-variant of omicron.
The same variant was dominant in the United States and several European countries in October.
On December 20, Xu Wenbo, director at the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, said China has been closely monitoring the omicron subvariants circulating in the country.
He said that the government has established a national Covid viral sequencing database, which will receive genetic sequences from three hospitals in every province each week to catch any emerging variants, he said.
"This will allow us to monitor in real-time how omicron subvariants are circulating in China and their makeup," he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
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