The head of a large nursing home in Beijing, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for himself and his institution, told the FT that “a few residents have died of Covid complications” despite a “closed loop” staffing system in which caretakers do not leave the facility.
“We have to fight on otherwise the hospital will come to a stop,” one Covid-positive doctor at Chaoyang Hospital, in Beijing’s main commercial and embassy district, told the Financial Times, coughing through their mask. One mother, who asked not to be identified, said she waited in the institute’s emergency room for 13 hours as her 10-month-old baby battled a high fever.
Alex Chen, a technology industry worker who has begun conducting informal infection surveys of Beijing residents on WeChat, found that by Wednesday 52 per cent of 150 respondents said they were positive. On Wednesday a commentary in the party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily, justified the government’s 180-degree turn from locking down cities to lifting restrictions, citing “the weakening of the pathogenicity of the Omicron virus, increased vaccinations and the accumulation of experience in prevention and control”.
After a 2 year world tour Covid has now decided to work from home.