Empty streets, deserted shopping centers, and residents staying away from one another are the new normal in Beijing -- but not because the city, like many Chinese ones before it, is under a zero-Covid lockdown, the media reported.
This time, it's because Beijing has been hit with a significant, and spreading, outbreak -- a first for the Chinese capital since the beginning of the pandemic, a week after leaders eased the country's restrictive Covid policy, CNN reported.
The impact of the outbreak in the city was visible in the upmarket shopping district Sanlitun on Tuesday. There, the usually bustling shops and restaurants were without customers and, in some cases, functioning on skeleton crews or offering takeout only, CNN reported.
Similar scenes are playing out across Beijing, as offices, shops and residential communities report being understaffed or shifting working arrangements as employees fall ill with the virus. Meanwhile, others stay home to avoid being infected.
One community worker told CNN that 21 of the 24 workers on her Beijing neighbourhood committee office, tasked with coordinating residential matters and activities, had fallen ill in recent days.
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"As our superiors are mostly infected, there's not much work being given to us," said the employee, Sylvia Sun. "(The usual) events, lectures, performances, parent-child activities will definitely not be held."
Beijing, which prior to the new rules was already experiencing a small-scale outbreak, is now on the front lines of a new reality for China: not since the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan have Chinese cities dealt with an outbreak without hefty control measures in place.
But for a place that until earlier this month assiduously tracked every case, there is now no clear data on the extent of the virus' spread. China's new Covid rules significantly rolled back the testing requirements that once dominated daily life, and residents have instead shifted to using antigen tests at home, when available, leaving official numbers unreliable, CNN reported.
'Chinese hospitals are swamped with Covid patients'
China is suffering through a brutal wave of Covid spurred by a rapid loosening of strict lockdown laws that had sparked mass demonstrations against Xi Jinping, the media reported.
Hospitals are 'swamped' with sick patients, fever clinics have long lines of people waiting for treatment, and an increasing number of doctors and nurses also falling sick, according to posts on the country's state-controlled social media networks, the Daily Mail reported.
Officially, Chinese case numbers are falling but only after the national health commission said it had stopped logging infections with low or no symptoms - which make up the bulk of daily totals. PCR testing has also been ramped down.
Experts had warned that China would be walloped by a wave of infection as it eased restrictions, because lockdowns mean no natural immunity has built up and Beijing's vaccines are believed to be less effective than Western equivalents, Daily Mail reported.
Analysts who spoke to MailOnline said the risks of the Chinese health system being overwhelmed are 'considerable', at which point deaths will start mounting because people cannot access care.
But it seems the Communist Party's fear of losing control of the public has outweighed its fear of a potentially crippling epidemic.
"Our hospital is overwhelmed with patients. There are 700, 800 people with fever coming every day," said a doctor surnamed Li at a tertiary hospital in Sichuan.
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"We are running out of medicine stocks for fever and cold, now waiting for delivery from our suppliers. A few nurses at the fever clinic were tested positive, there aren't any special protective measures for hospital staff and I believe many of us will soon get infected," Li added, the Daily Mail reported.
A nurse at another hospital in Chengdu said: "I was swamped with nearly 200 patients with Covid symptoms last night."
Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at Hong Kong University, said insufficient medical resources to cope with an overload of Covid cases contributed to a surge in deaths in Hong Kong when infections peaked there earlier this year, and he warned that the same was going to happen in China, Daily Mail reported.
