iPhone | iPad
Android
Huawei
Anthony Sanchez was convicted of raping and murdering 21-year-old Juli Busken, who had just completed her last semester at the University of Oklahoma
KT APPDOWNLOAD
China boosts bed spaces as Omicron outbreak spreads
Authorities previously sent patients with any symptoms to specialist hospitals.
AFP
China moved to free up hospital beds as officials on Wednesday reported thousands of new cases from an Omicron-led coronavirus outbreak that has put millions under lockdown and raised fears for the health system.
Just three weeks ago China was reporting under one hundred Covid cases daily, but that number has swelled past 1,000 per day for a week.
It logged 3,290 new confirmed infections on Wednesday, including 11 severe cases.
China, where the virus emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, has largely kept it under control since then through strict measures, and has not reported any Covid-related deaths for more than a year.
But the highly transmissible Omicron variant is posing a stern challenge to its zero-Covid strategy, resulting in the 17.5 million residents of the southern tech hub of Shenzhen being locked down and other cities also under tight restrictions.
Authorities previously sent all patients with any symptoms to specialist hospitals.
But the National Health Commission late Tuesday said patients with mild Covid cases could isolate at a central quarantine facility to ease pressure on hospitals over fears of a looming bed shortage.
"Patients with Omicron variant strains are mainly asymptomatic infections and mild cases, most of them do not require serious treatment," the National Health Commission said.
"All admission to designated hospitals will take up a lot of medical resources."
Images of patients lying on gurneys outside hospitals in Hong Kong, where hospitals have been overrun by a surge in cases, have spooked mainland officials, who are now also rushing to build makeshift hospitals in some provinces.
Footage on state broadcaster CCTV Wednesday showed dozens of giant cranes assembling "temporary hospitals" in northeast China's Jilin province, which has reported more than 5,000 cases over the past week.
The province of more than 24 million residents has only 22,880 hospital beds.
Mass testing campaign
As of Tuesday, 6,000 railway carriage-style hospital rooms -- first erected during the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan -- have been put in place in Jilin City and the nearby metropolis of Changchun, to deal with a feared influx of patients.
As well as leaving tens of millions of people under lockdown across the country, the latest spike in cases has sparked long queues outside mass testing sites and tight controls at ports, raising the risk of trade disruption.
In China's biggest city, Shanghai, authorities continued to ramp up a mass testing campaign that so far has seen at least 1.2 million tested in recent days, according to state media.
Shanghai has closed school campuses and this week began locking down individual residential compounds with cases or suspected close contacts for at least 48 hours for testing in a targeted approach, as fatigue with zero-Covid develops.
But city authorities said on Wednesday that in coming days they would also begin locking down and testing an unspecified number of "key areas" in Shanghai, suggesting an expanded test mandate across the city of 25 million people.
ALSO READ:
A lockdown in major tech hub Shenzhen has prompted fears from analysts of a drag on growth as many factories and businesses closed.
Major Apple supplier Foxconn said Wednesday it had resumed some operations at sites where production and accommodation were on the same site.
The capital Beijing reiterated earlier rules that banned all travellers from areas with reported cases in the past 14 days, while other arrivals must show a recent negative Covid-19 test.
More news from
Move aims at raising the organisation’s ability to keep pace with the latest industry and technology shifts
If Congress fails to provide funding for the fiscal year starting October 1, many US government services would be disrupted
The dashing batter needs to decode the 50-over format and bat through the innings
The new AI tool, called Copilot, will work across the company's web and productivity applications Bing, Edge browser, and Microsoft 365 software suite
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths: 5,000 people have been killed, 12,000 injured and more than 6 million face acute food shortages in Sudan
Multiple people had notified Google Maps about the collapse in the years leading up to his death and had urged the company to update its route information
Sheikh Ahmad calls on Iraq to take 'concrete, decisive and urgent measures' to address the ruling