A Shanghai hospital has told its staff to prepare for a 'tragic battle' with COVID-19 as it expects half of the city's 25 million people to get infected by the end of the year while the virus sweeps through China largely unchecked.
Several cities distributing free anti-fever drugsFirst mRNA vaccines to arrive in China for German expats
Still, China's official death count since the pandemic began three years ago stands at 5,241 - a fraction of what most other countries faced.say demand has jumped in the past week, pushing fees higher.from many disease experts - confirmed 389,306 cases with symptoms. "This year's Christmas Eve, New Year's Day, and the Lunar New Year are destined to be unsafe," the hospital said.
Experts say China could face more than a million COVID deaths next year, given relatively low full vaccination rates among its vulnerable elderly population. The deputy director of the hospital's emergency department, Han Xue, told CCTV they were receiving 400 patients a day, four times more than usual.
Smaller cities away from the affluent eastern and southern coast are particularly vulnerable. Tongchuan, a city of 700,000 in the northwestern Shaanxi province, called on Wednesday for all medical workers who retired in the past five years to join the battle against COVID.
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