To echo China's new guidelines for COVID-19 prevention and control, local 
governments and hospitals across the country have been optimizing medical 
services and the allocation of medical resources to face a likely surge in 
patients and take better care of the elderly and most vulnerable groups.

On November 11, the country announced 20 new COVID-19 prevention and control 
measures. On top of that, another 10 new measures were published on December 7 
to further optimize China's COVID-19 control policy.

The measures require enhancing medical resources to prioritize COVID-19 
patients.

As the latest Omicron variants spread rapidly with strong transmissibility, 
some hospitals in major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, have 
seen people waiting in lines for hours to enter fever clinics.

To avoid panic and a squeeze on medical resources, local governments and 
hospitals are upgrading existing temporary hospitals, adding ICU beds and 
better distributing medical resources.

China built temporary hospitals to receive and treat COVID-19 patients with 
mild symptoms and cut off the spread of the virus. With the relaxation of 
COVID-19 control and prevention measures, more temporary hospitals have been 
upgraded and transformed into sub-designated city-level hospitals based on the 
size of each city's population.

Jiao Yahui, general director of the Bureau of Medical Administration under the 
National Health Commission, said at a press conference on December 9 that the 
sub-designated hospitals would treat patients rather than just isolating them 
as the mobile cabin hospitals did. She also said 10 percent of the beds in 
these hospitals would be transformed into intensive care unit (ICU) beds.

"There are 138,100 ICU beds in China, of which 106,500 are in top-tier medical 
institutions. On average, there are 10 ICU beds for every 100,000 people," Jiao 
said.

Experts have also been providing educational information to the public about 
the virus and asking asymptomatic patients and patients with mild symptoms not 
to cause a run on hospitals or jam up the emergency number 120 to keep the 
medical resources available for possible severe cases.

Many hospitals across the country have already begun changing their approach. 

Lu Wei, a urologist with a district hospital in southwest China's Chongqing, 
told CGTN that a temporary hospital that the district hospital built to 
separate and treat COVID-19 patients is expected to be decommissioned soon, 
along with the national policy changes. 

"It was not easy for hundreds of patients and medical staff to be restricted in 
the temporary hospital built in a suburb away from their families," said Lu. 
"It's especially hard when they stay there for a longer time."

Lu said rather than keeping the temporary hospital open, the district hospital 
will instead expand its existing fever-treating department into a designated 
zone for COVID-19 patients. Doctors from other departments can also be assigned 
to treat their patients in this zone, and no excessive quarantine is required.

Patients with other illnesses will no longer be required to do a COVID-19 test, 
only elderly patients will be tested for the virus, and special attention will 
be paid to them if the results are positive, Lu said.

Beijing has also set up new fever clinics and consulting rooms or expanded 
existing ones, requiring all hospitals at the second level and higher and 
qualified primary medical institutions to set up fever clinics.

In many places, including Beijing and east China's Zhejiang Province, multiple 
hospitals have opened special online services for COVID-19 treatment so that 
patients with symptoms can make inquiries online.

Hospitals in Shanghai have opened a special admission channel to receive 
patients whose nucleic acid test or antigen test results were abnormal.

"We have set up different areas and provided different channels for different 
groups of patients to ensure all the patients can receive medical care timely. 
For patients who are seriously ill, they will receive treatment in time whether 
or not they have negative COVID-19 test results," Ma Xin, deputy president of 
the Huashan Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, told Shanghai Media Group.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-12-13/-New-Approaches-Hospitals-gear-up-to-prioritize-COVID-19-patients-1fJokZulTY4/index.html


Source CGTN