Exhausted doctors and hard-to-find drugs: The situation with the coronavirus in China’s provinces is difficult

In Anhui province, one of the poorest in the east Chinathe blow from COVID-19 is heavy: doctors exhausted from long hours of work, tests and medicines hard to find, clinics not well equipped facing crowds of patients.

Across the country, hospitals saw an influx of patients after China suddenly lifted health restrictions in early December.

The situation is particularly critical in the countryside, where there is a chronic shortage of doctors, equipment and training. Residents make the long journey to seek treatment in the city, but the rest do not necessarily have the means to travel and resort to rural clinics.

When COVID-19 reached the province in mid-December, Anhui’s doctors quickly found themselves without any other tests or medicines. “Nobody could test, so we didn’t know if we were positive or not. It was absolute chaos. Things were better when the government kept us all confined,” said Shao, a resident of a village near Bengbu, a city of 3.3 million people.

A doctor says he had to work 14-hour days in December as his village clinic, which has just two rooms, suddenly began receiving up to ten times the number of patients it normally would. Patients “had to wait in line outside” the building as the waiting room was full, he explains.

“Let’s protect ourselves”

The Chinese government last month limited the registration of deaths from COVID to those directly attributable to respiratory failure linked to the new coronavirus.

This has resulted in only a few dozen deaths being attributed to the virus since the beginning of December in this country of 1.4 billion inhabitants.

The village doctor said that in his own zone about 50 elderly people have died since early December, the majority of whom already had other health problems, such as diabetes or heart disease.

When asked, health authorities in Bengbu, which includes the villages visited by AFP, did not give a local number of deaths or cases.

The masks they are rare in this part of the country, which is not often visited by Western journalists. However, as everywhere in China, the virus is never far away. Banner on the street calls on the population to “scientifically strengthen the prevention and control of the epidemic”

In Hisan village, a 50-year-old woman says she is looking forward to all the young people returning for the Lunar New Year (January 22 this year), even if it could cause a new wave of the coronavirus. In Anhui province, a resident of about the same age does not share her enthusiasm. “We are really afraid,” he says according to APE-MPE, cited by AFP.