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China lacked a 'zero COVID' exit plan. Its people are paying the price.
Patients quarrel with doctors to access drugs that are in short supply, like cough medicines and pain killers. Medics are overloaded; infected staff continue to work because of a scarcity of personnel.
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People queue to buy antigen test kits at a pharmacy amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Xian, in China's northern Shaanxi province on December 20, 2022.
(AFP/STR)
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t the public hospital in Shanghai where Nora, a 30-year-old doctor, works, tension has spiraled since China relaxed its stringent zero-COVID policy on Dec. 7.
Patients quarrel with doctors to access drugs that are in short supply, like cough medicines and pain killers. Medics are overloaded; infected staff continue to work because of a scarcity of personnel.
"The policy of controlling covid was relaxed very suddenly," said Nora, who would not give her full name because of the issue's sensitivity. "The hospitals should've been notified in advance to make adequate preparations."
After years of enforcing harsh measures to stamp out the coronavirus, President Xi Jinping's abrupt abandonment of zero-COVID in the face of protests and a widening outbreak has left China scrambling to avert a collapse of its public health system.
Shortages of drugs and testing kits and logistical disruptions are upending daily life. Four hospital workers told Reuters that insufficient planning for the end of zero-COVID had left them to manage a chaotic reopening.
"I think China thought that its policy was successful and that a gradual transition to the endemic phase was feasible, but obviously it was not," said Kenji Shibuya, a former senior adviser to the World Health Organisation.
More than a dozen global health experts, epidemiologists, residents and political analysts interviewed by Reuters identified the failure to vaccinate the elderly and communicate an exit strategy to the public, as well as excessive focus on eliminating the virus, as causes of the strain on China's medical infrastructure.
