Rural China Faces Crisis in the Coming Wave of Covid
Thanks to decades of official neglect, health systems in the countryside lack facilities and professionals to handle a surge of infections.
Rural China doesn’t have enough hospital beds or medical professionals to handle a pandemic.
Photographer: Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images
Millions in China are preparing to trek home to celebrate the Chinese New Year in late January. Many will travel from cities where large swaths of the population have been infected with Covid since the loosening of the country’s notorious Covid Zero policy to small cities and the countryside where — so far — few significant outbreaks have been reported.
This Covid rebalancing promises to be brutal. Rural Chinese communities are older and thus more vulnerable to Covid than their urban counterparts. Yet thanks to decades of official neglect, their health systems lack facilities and professionals to handle a surge of infections. For the already stressed Chinese authorities, there are no easy or inexpensive answers. In the new year, the pandemic is coming for the countryside.