Yao Ruyan paced frantically outside the fever clinic of a county hospital in China’s industrial Hebei province, 70 kilometres southwest of Beijing. Her mother-in-law had Covid-19 and needed urgent medical care, but all hospitals nearby were full. “They say there’s no bed here,” 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 overwhelmed. 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. However, now markets are bustling and diners are packed, even as the virus is spreading in other parts of China. The headlines in state media said China is “starting to resume normal life.”