Home quarantine

Fearing the influx of those returning for the holiday would result in the second wave of infection, officials in Lianshan township persuaded these people to quarantine at home for a week.

Like many others in the village, Deng's family stayed at home for seven days and had no interaction with other people. As the second wave of infections did not eventuate, villagers' fears faded and they were happy to join the banquet, she said.

Xiao Chongjie, deputy head of Lianshan Township Central Hospital, which serves 59,000 people, breathed a sigh of relief when the anticipated second wave of infections did not arrive.

The 52-year-old expert in traditional Chinese medicine said: "Our hospital has 119 beds, but on December 18, the peak day of infection, more than 200 people with COVID-19 needed beds. They had to stay in corridors and two tents I erected.

"All the 70 doctors and nurses in our hospital were infected and we had to work day and night for weeks and barely had time for meals," said Xiao, who ran a fever for six days but took little rest.

Life returned to normal at the hospital on Jan 1.

Xiao said: "During Spring Festival, the hospital's emergency department received 30 to 40 patients a day, much the same as usual. I took two days off and had a good rest."

On Monday afternoon, the hospital appeared deserted, as its 118 beds were unoccupied.

The only COVID patient, Chen Taiju, a 58-year-old farmer, was admitted that day, as she had difficulty breathing.

Before the weeklong holiday, there were concerns over how well rural areas with weak medical infrastructure would handle the epidemic as millions of migrant workers traveled home.

However, Mao Dezhi, an official at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said the epidemic situation in these areas was stable during the holiday, and there was no resurgence of outbreaks.

More than 3.8 million officials took part in rural epidemic control work during the holiday, and a special task force for such work at all levels of government functioned well throughout this period, Mao said at a news conference on Monday.

Guo Yanhong, director of the NHC's health emergency response department, said before the holiday that 99.1 percent of township and village hospitals had opened fever clinics, and the commission required all clinics to open during Spring Festival.

Moreover, the shortage of drugs in rural hospitals has eased significantly, and local authorities have also hired more medical workers and asked such employees at major hospitals to help in rural areas, she said.

Each township hospital is equipped with at least one ambulance, and social organizations and the public have also been mobilized to transfer patients in serious condition in rural areas to large hospitals in cities, she added.

Li Kexing, a doctor in Chuanjiang village, Guanghan city, Sichuan province, was relieved that there was no second wave of infections.

The 52-year-old worked in the village clinic for nearly 30 years, serving a population of about 6,000.

"On the peak days of December 13 and 14, between 200 and 300 patients with COVID-19 visited the clinic each day. It normally only receives 40 to 60 patients a day," Li said.

"Although I had a temperature of nearly 39 C, I worked from 7 am to 11 pm. All the medicine in the clinic was used up."

As the number of patients returned to normal before Spring Festival, Li closed the clinic until Friday. On Monday, he attended to only 40 patients.