Beijing’s health official said the pandemic is easing with a steadily decreasing number of outpatients. However, medical service agents in Beijing said hospitals remained flooded with patients, and family members revealed an inability to obtain medicine for their chronically ill relatives.
At a press conference on Jan. 30, China’s National Health Commission said there’s a gradual decrease in hospital visits nationwide, and the grassroots medical and health institutions were stable and orderly during the Lunar Chinese New Year.
All interviewees who spoke with The Epoch Times provided their surnames only for fear of reprisals.
High Cost of Admission
In China, the position of a medical service agent requires training and certification. Their job is to accompany patients, from making an appointment, to keeping records of fees and payments, getting referrals, hospitalization, and even making connections with and receiving special treatment from the doctors and hospitals.Ms. Song works as a medical service agent in Beijing. She told The Epoch Times the waiting list for inpatients in general hospitals is now backlogged for months.
Service agents can help expedite admission into hospitals, but the current wait time is approximately two weeks. She said the expedited process fee is 20,000 yuan ($2,950) minimum, and it must be paid upfront.
She said, “the majority of inpatients had white lungs at that time. Everyone was panicking about buying medicine. Hospitals had refused any new inpatients before the New Year. The hospital just started accepting patients again after the Chinese New Year.”
Mr. Liu also works as a service agent in Beijing. He said, “The wards have been tight in Beijing hospitals. There are now many inpatients from outside Beijing and not just COVID patients.”
He said the service fee would be around 800 to 1,000 yuan ($117.89 to $147.37) for getting an appointment at the general hospital; if it’s for hospitalization, the fee will vary according to the type of ward and the specialist.
Drug Shortage
A Shanghai resident, Mr. Lin, told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Feb. 2 that patients have to find their own drugs.His father contracted COVID after China lifted its strict COVID policy. “He had a slow recovery because of the underlying illness that required hemodialysis,” he said, but luckily he was released from the hospital recently.
He indicated that there were still many COVID patients remaining in the hospitals. The doctor prescribed gamma globulin, but the patients have to find the source for it themselves, he said.
Mr. Li, a resident of Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province in northwest China, said an elderly family member at home had underlying kidney disease and contracted COVID in December. There was no medicine available, “around Jan. 23, their condition worsened, and I finally managed to get the sivelestat sodium from an acquaintance, but my family member had passed away,” he said.
Mr. Lee, a family member of a patient at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University in Henan, told The Epoch Times that their three-quarters of their 70-year-old family member’s lungs had turned white, and they have been in the ICU since Jan. 22.
“There is no immunoglobulin at the hospital. We couldn’t get it anywhere,” he said.
