China covid update: Overburdened hospitals now facing blood shortage, claims report

A day after it surfaced that China got nearly 37 million positive Covid-19 cases in a single day, more reports are coming in citing that the sudden surge in cases is causing blood shortages at hospitals across multiple provinces and cities.  

The current crisis with 37 million cases a day is so far the largest in the world. A Bloomberg report has stated that the Blood Center of Shandong Province has told China National Radio that it has issued red alert warnings for insufficient inventory for two blood types in recent days. 

All this while, the Chinese government has been claiming that the deaths to Covid-19 virus are still low. On Thursday, as per the official records, there were only 3,049 new infections reported that day. Whereas, a Bloomberg report claimed that on Tuesday alone, 37 million people got newly infected with Covid-19 across China. This data was shared at an internal meeting of China’s National Health Commission held on Wednesday, the report stated.   

A news outlet operated by the ruling Communist Party in Qingdao on Friday reported the municipal health chief saying that the eastern city was seeing "between 490,000 and 530,000" new Covid cases a day. 

Bo Tao reportedly said that the infection rate would accelerate by another 10 percent over the weekend. 

Earlier this month, the Chinese government removed its Zero Covid rule, and adopted an stark opposite policy, which clearly says that those who die directly due to respiratory failure and complications due to any variant of Coronavirus would be counted under the Covid death statistics.  

The counting method is very much against the World Health Organization (WHO) guidance. Due to this rule, the death toll reported currently is much below the actual death toll. 

China removed the lockdowns, lengthy quarantines, and travel curbs, something it didn’t do in the past three years. 

The government is keeping a close watch on the country's media, and censoring online posts. Most government-run publications have downplayed the severity of the country's latest wave, instead depicting the policy reversal as logical and controlled. 

But many social media posts have revealed the ground reality. As per social media posts, hospitals and crematoriums across the country are struggling to cope up with the surging infections. There is already an alarming blood and medicine shortage. The Bloomberg report noted that a red alert is the highest level of warning, which means the blood in store can only meet the dosage of acute and critically ill patients for three days.