China tries to ‘bury the memory’ and trauma of zero-COVID era
Al Jazeera
A year after Beijing abandoned the policy’s strict lockdowns and endless testing, its failures remain unaddressed.
When Evelyn Ma’s two-year-old daughter had a persistently high fever and a bad cough earlier this month, she and her husband began to worry.
The couple decided to take their daughter to a nearby children’s hospital in the city of Jinan.
But as Ma walked through the doors with her daughter in her arms, she found a scene of chaos.
“Doctors and nurses were rushing around everywhere between long lines of patients waiting their turn, and people were even sitting on the floor and against the walls,” Ma, who is 36 and works as a sales representative in China’s northeastern Shandong province, told Al Jazeera.
China experienced a sharp rise in cases of influenza, pneumonia, RSV and common cold viruses, particularly among children, in early October. By the next month, the surge in the number of people seeking medical attention had put a strain on hospitals, especially those catering to children.
