China battles a spike in COVID as hospitals fill up fast; WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed alarm about the quick detection of Covid cases in China and noted that hospitals there are rapidly filling up. Beijing officials maintain that the number of patients in intensive care units (ICU) is ‘quite low,’ while Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, told BBC on Wednesday that the ICU has been busy.

Despite the fact that no Covid fatalities were recorded on Wednesday, there have been questions regarding the virus’s true impact. China has seen an increase in coronavirus cases ever since the strict Covid regulations were eased last week as a result of significant protests. According to reports, there aren’t many ICU patients in China, but anecdotally, the ICUs are getting busy, according to Ryan.

‘We have been stating for weeks that it would be very difficult to entirely eradicate this highly contagious virus using only public health and social measures’. According to reports, the current increase in Covid infections in China is thought to be caused by the BF.7 subvariant of the omicron. In October, the identical variation dominated in the US and other European nations.

On December 20, Xu Wenbo, the head of the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, stated. The omicron subvariants that are in use in China have been carefully observed. He claimed that the government has set up a national Covid viral sequencing database, which would receive genetic sequences from three hospitals in each province once a week to monitor any new variations. This would enable real-time monitoring of the composition and distribution of omicron subvariants in China, the scientist added.