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What’s the key to stopping Covid overload of health systems in China? Focus on the vulnerable, study finds
- Research on Shanghai’s outbreak points to low risk of milder cases becoming severe
- Risk strategies can be refined to make the most of available medical resources, they say
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Authorities can protect health systems from Covid-19 overload by giving basic care to non-serious patients and focusing medical resources on the most vulnerable, according to researchers in Shanghai.
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In a paper published in the online journal China CDC Weekly on the weekend, the researchers said a study of Omicron patients who initially had mild or no symptoms during the city’s two-month wave earlier this year found that these patients were unlikely to develop severe illness and needed only moderate primary care.
Allocating less resources to milder patients would free up more care for worse cases, reducing strain on the overall system, the researchers found.
“Once medical resources are focused precisely on vulnerable populations, and non-vulnerable populations are given moderate primary care support, the adequacy of medical resources will be greatly optimised and enhanced, and the treatment of non Covid-19 will not be strained due to Covid-19 outbreaks,” researchers from Shanghai’s Huashan Hospital who co-authored the study wrote in an analysis published in their department’s social media account.
The conclusions come after more than 620,000 people were infected and 588 people died in Shanghai during a massive outbreak of cases earlier this year.
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