Yao Ruyan paced frantically outside the fever clinic of a county hospital in China's in💝dustrial Hebei꧟ province, 70 kilometres (43 miles) southwest of Beijing.
Her mo🅷ther-in-law ♏had COVID-19 and needed urgent medical care, but all hospitals nearby were full.
“They say there's no beds h𒀰ere,” she barked into her phone.
As China🌊 grapples with its first-ever national COVID-19 wave, emergency wards in small cities and towns southwest of Beijing are overwhelmedღ.
Intensive care units are turning away ambulances, relatives of sick people are ♔searching for open beds, and patients are slumped on benches in hospital corridors and lying on floors for a⛎ lack of beds.
Yao's elderly mother-in-law had fallen ill a week ago. They went first to a local hospital, where lung scans showed sig🔜ns of pneumonia.
But the hospital couldn't handle COVID-19 cases, Yao was told. She was told to ಌgo to hospitals in adjacent counties.
As Yao and her husband drove from hospital to hospital, they found al💦l the wards were full. Zhuozhou Hospital, an hour's drive from Yao's hometown, was the latest disappointment.
“I'm furious,” Yao said, tearing up, as she clutched the lung scans from the local hospital. “I ⛦don't have much hope. We've been out for a long time and I'm terrified because she's having difficulty breathing.”
Over two days, AP journalists visited five hospitals and two crematoriums in towns ꦏand small cities in Baoding and Langfang prefectures, in central 🐬Hebei province.
The area was the epicentre of one of China's first outbreaks after the state loosened COVID-19 controls in November and December. For weeks, the re♊gion went quiet, as people fell ill and stayed home.
Many have now recovered. Today, markets are bustling, diner🥀sꦓ pack restaurants and cars are honking in snarling traffic, even as the virus is spreading in other parts of China.
In recent days, headlines in state media said the area is “ s🅺tarting to resume normal life.”
But life in central Heb🌌ei's emergency wards a💜nd crematoriums is anything but normal.
Even as the young go back to work and lines at fever clinics shrink, many of Hebei's elderly are falling into critical condition. It could b🍌e a harbinger of what's to come for the rest of China.
The Chinese government has r⛦eported only seven COVID-19 deaths since restrictions were loosened dramatically on December 7, bringing the country's total toll to 5,241.
On Tuesdaওy, a Chinese health official said that China only counts dea🐈ths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll.
Experts have forecast between a million and 2 million deaths in China next year, and the World Health Organisation warned that Beijing's way of counting would “und♈erestimate the true death 💮toll.”
At Baoding No🎐. 2 Hospital, in Zhuozhou, on Wednesday, patien♕ts thronged the hallway of the emergency ward. Patients were breathing with the help of respirators. One woman wailed after doctors told her that a loved one had died.
At tꦦhe Zhuozhou crematorium, furnaces are burning overtime as workers struggle to cope with a spike in deat🌃hs in the past week, according to one employee.
A fune𓄧ral shop worker estimated it is burning 20 to 30 bodies🌠 a day, up from three to four before COVID-19 measures were loosened.
“There's been so many people dying,” said Zhao 🥃Yongsheng, a worker at a funeral goods shop near a local hospꦅital. “They work day and night, but they can't burn them all.”
Over two hours at the Gaobeidian crematorium on Thursday, AP journalists observed three ambulances and two vans unloඣad bodies.
“There's been a lot!” a worker said when asked about the number of COVID-19 deaths, befor⛄e funeral director Ma Xiaowei stepped in and༒ brought the journalists to meet a local government official.
As the official lꦚistened in, Ma confirmed there were more cremations, but said he didn't know if COVID-19 was involved. He blamed the extra deaths on the arrival of winter.
But even as anecdotal evidence and modelling suggests lꦫarge numbers of people are getting infected and dying, some Hebei officials deny the vir🎉us has had much impact.
“There's no so-called explosion in cases, it's all under control,” said Wang Ping, the administrative manager of Gaobeidian Hospital, ♋speaking by the hospital's main gate.
Wang said on🎃ly a sixth of the hospital's 600 beds were occupied, but refused to allow AP journalists to enter.
Two ambulances came to the hospital during the half hour AP journalists were present, and a patient's relative told the AP they were turned away from Gaobeidian's emergency wardꩲ because it was full.
In Bazhou, a city🧸 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Gaobeidian, a hundred or more people packed the emergency ward of Langfang No. 4 People's Hospitalᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ on Thursday night.
Guards worked to corral the crowds as pe🔥ople🧸 jostled for positions. With no space in the ward, patients spilled into corridors and hallways.
Sick people sprawled on blankets on the floor as staff frantically wheeled ꦉgurneys and ventilators. In a hallway, half a dozen patients wheezed on metal benches as oxygen tanks pumped air into their noses.
Over two hours, AP journalists witnessed half a doꦕzen or more ambulances pull up to the hospital's ICU and load critical patients to sprint to other hospitals, even as cars pull𓄧ed up with dozens of new patients.
A beige van pulled up to the ICU and🅰 honked frantically at a waiting ambulance. “Move!” the driver shouted.
"Let's go, let's go!” a panicked voice cried. Five people hoisted a man bundled in blankets out of the back of the van and rushed him꧃ into the hospital.
The guard asked a patient to move, but backed off when a relative snarled at him. The bundled man was laid on the floor in𒆙stead, amid doctor🐎s running back and forth.
Medical workers rushed over a ventilator. “Can you open his mouth𝐆?” someone shouted.
As white plastic tub🌳es were fitted onto his face, the man began to breathe more easily.
Others were not so lucky. Relatives surrounding another bed began tearing up as an elderly woman's vitals flatlined. A man tugged a cloth over the woman's face, and they stood, silently, before her body was wheeled away. Within minutes, another🃏 patient had taken her place.
