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Death toll from heat wave crosses 10 in city with no respite in sight
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The death toll from the persistent hot weather in Shanghai has crossed 10, officials confirmed yesterday.
More than 10 people have died of heat stroke this summer in Shanghai, including three in Minhang, the Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention said late yesterday.
About one-third of them fell sick even though they spent time indoors, the center said, without giving more details.
The latest victim succumbed to heat stroke at the Minhang District Central Hospital yesterday, in addition to two patients who died there on Saturday. The hospital said another two patients were in life-threatening condition.
A doctor at the hospital advised senior citizens not to avoid air conditioning, dismissing a widely held belief among the elderly Chinese that air conditioning was unhealthy or a waste of money, according to a Xinhua news agency report.
The high temperature yesterday stood at 39.4 degrees Celsius — the 24th straight day of high temperatures in the city — and making July the hottest summer in decades, according to the Xujiahui observatory. The previous record was in July 1934 which had a total of 23 high temperature days when it hovered at or above 35 degrees.
The mercury is likely to stay around 39 degrees today and in the coming days.
Showers and thunderstorms are likely in parts of the city in the afternoon but any thought of relief from the heat is likely to be short-lived.
“It’s less likely that we will see a typhoon that can bring relief to the high temperatures in Shanghai by August,” Wu Rui, a chief service officer at the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau, said. “Typhoons usually come when the subtropical high turns weak. This year that is likely to be in the middle or end of August.”
The bureau has warned the elderly, pregnant women and those suffering chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular ailments, to refrain from going outside between 10am to 4pm, the hottest time of the day.
A 63-year-old retired worker who suffered severe heat stroke was also in critical condition in Renji Hospital yesterday. The man fainted on the road when he was collecting waste in the scorching sun.
“But it wouldn’t be right to say that he fainted because of heat as he also suffered from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease for years,” a doctor at Renji Hospital said.
Renji Hospital said it was dealing with 13,000 patients every day, a 10 percent jump than usual. Most of them suffer acute gastroenteritis, air-conditioner related diseases and respiratory tract infection.
People in the suburbs are most likely to suffer from heat stroke because of lack of air-conditioners and other measures to protect them from the heat wave, said Song Guofan, a city health bureau official.
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