China is struggling with a surge of respiratory ailments
The stress on hospitals points to old problems
On China’s fever-prone social media, netizens have been sweating with anxiety as hospital waiting rooms fill up. On November 29th a provincial newspaper posted a message on Weibo, a microblog service, describing an unnamed hospital in the north. The waiting area, it said, was filled with the sound of coughing and the crying of children. After receiving confirmation that her daughter had tested positive for a bacterium that can cause pneumonia, one woman, having waited hours, still had 300 people ahead of her in the queue for a consultation.
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This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Not again”
From the December 2nd 2023 edition
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