Showing the plight of people in China, Twitter user Eric Feigl-Ding wrote, "Epic long lines at crematoriums… imagine having to not just wait for hours to cremate you loved ones, but have to do it carrying their deceased bodies for all those hours… let’s have empathy for the horrific #COVID19 wave 🌊 crashing into China. 🙏"
In the long thread he also stated that hospitals in China are struggling with huge infection rates and there is a scarcity of oxygen even the hospitals of capital city Beijing.
Earlier on 24 December, Ding had shared a video of a long queue of dead bodies on stretchers lying along the walls of a hospital corridor. The morgues in hospitals have run out of capacity as China has a huge vulnerable population without herd immunity against Covid.
Furnaces in crematorium are burning overtime as workers struggle to cope with a spike in deaths in the past week. Emergency wards in small towns and cities southwest of Beijing are overburdened as China struggles with its first-ever nationwide COVID-19 wave. Patients are slumped on benches in hospital hallways and lying on floors due to a lack of beds, emergency rooms are turning away ambulances, and sick people's relatives are looking for available beds.
On the contrary to these horrifying videos, according to AP, the Chinese government has reported only seven Covid deaths since restrictions were loosened dramatically on 7 December, bringing the country's total toll to 5,241.
A Chinese health official said that China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official Covid death toll, a narrow definition that excludes many deaths that would be attributed to COVID-19 in other places.
Experts have forecast between a million and 2 million deaths in China through the end of next year, and a top World Health Organization official warned that Beijing's way of counting would “underestimate the true death toll."
(With inputs from agencies)
