The new outbreak of covid-19 has exhausted the resources of public hospitals in the Chinese capital, Beijing, with patients, especially the elderly, lying on stretchers in corridors or receiving oxygen sitting in wheelchairs due to a lack of beds.

The Chuiyangliu hospital, in the east of the city, was overcrowded with newly arrived patients yesterday, and by mid-morning there were no more free beds, but ambulances were still arriving with more infected people.

Under pressure, nurses and doctors ran back and forth to get information and triage the most urgent cases.

The sharp rise in people seeking hospital care followed the lifting by China's authorities of its most severe restrictions to combat the covid-19 pandemic last month, after nearly three years of lockdowns, travel bans and school closures that had serious consequences for the country's economy and sparked unusual street protests in a country that fiercely represses political dissent.

The pandemic outbreak caused by yet another variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus seems to have spread fastest first in the most densely populated cities.

Now, the authorities are worried because the new outbreak is reaching smaller towns and rural areas with less well-resourced public health units.

Several local governments today began appealing to people not to travel to their homelands on the occasion of the Lunar New Year holiday, showing growing concern about the openness decreed by the central authorities.

Abroad, a growing number of governments are demanding tests for travelers from China, arguing that these are necessary because the Chinese government is not sharing enough information about the outbreak.

On Wednesday, the European Union "strongly encouraged" its member states to impose covid-19 tests before passengers board, although not all have done so.

Italy - the first country in Europe where the pandemic caused a high number of victims and chaos in the health system at the beginning of 2020 - became the first EU member state to require testing of passengers coming from China last week, followed by France and Spain with their own measures.

But the measures in the EU bloc were adopted after the United States imposed a negative test on anyone traveling from China less than 48 hours in advance.

China has criticized these demands and warned that it will retaliate by taking measures against the countries that are imposing them.

According to Lusa, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday that he was concerned about the Chinese government's failure to provide data on the new pandemic outbreak.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning told a press conference yesterday that Beijing has regularly "shared information and data with the international community in an open and transparent manner".

"At the moment, the Covid-19 situation in China is under control," said Mao, adding: "Furthermore, we hope that the WHO leadership will take an impartial, objective and science-based stance to play a positive role in the global fight against the pandemic."

Despite local authorities' concerns about Beijing's opening at a time when millions of people will be traveling to celebrate the Lunar New Year, Hong Kong has announced that it will reopen some of its border crossings into mainland China on Sunday and allow tens of thousands of people to cross daily without being quarantined.

Hong Kong's land and sea border crossings with the mainland have been virtually closed for almost three years and their reopening is expected to give a much-needed boost to Hong Kong's tourism and trade sectors.