City deploys more medics to treat severe COVID-19 cases
The makeshift hospital at the historical Jiangwan Stadium in Yangpu District is now officially ready.
Shanghai has further enhanced medical resources at COVID-19 designated hospitals to reduce the rate of severe conditions and deaths, according to the city's health commission.
There are 48 COVID-19 designated hospitals at city and district levels, with a total of about 25,000 beds, the commission said. They are mainly for coronavirus infections with normal, serious and critical symptoms, as well as those with severe underlying diseases and children under 7 years old with no guardian, said Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the commission.
"The designated hospitals are still facing challenges such as the large number of patients in critical condition or in old age," he observed.
"The city will keep allocating additional medical resources to these hospitals and make the transfer service from makeshift hospitals and communities more smooth."
Apart from the designated hospitals' own staff, more than 10,000 medics from national medical teams and other local city-level hospitals have joined in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
They also include a 1,000-member medical team specializing in severe symptoms with personnel hailing from Shanghai as well as neighboring Jiangsu, Zhejiang, central Hunan and Hubei and southeastern Fujian provinces, Zhao revealed.
An ambulance delivers a senior citizen to hospital under closed-loop management.
With more city- and district-level makeshift hospitals shutting down as the pandemic wanes, an additional 6,000 medical workers have been assigned to 28 designated hospitals to help reduce the fatality rate, according to Zhao.
Four hospitals with 500-plus beds – Children's Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai Children's Medical Center, Shanghai Children's Hospital and Xinhua Hospital's Changxing branch – have been designated for child infections along with family wards for accompanying parents.
Other local hospitals have been gradually restoring normal operations since May 1, Zhao pointed out.
The number of non-emergency surgeries has been restored to 20 percent of the amount in early March, while emergency surgeries are being conducted immediately, he added.
The hospitals have been asked to set up buffer zones in emergency rooms, rescue rooms and operating theaters for patients in emergency conditions or those who have yet to receive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results.
The city reported seven more COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, with the casualties having an average age of 87.3 years. All had severe underlying conditions, and only one of them had received a single dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
Of COVID-19 patients in local designated and makeshift hospitals, 379 have severe symptoms and 71 are in critical condition.
