- A man in Zhengzhou said that paramedics refused to visit his four-month-old baby because she was vomiting and having diarrhoea.
- China is dealing with a significant wave of the virus, with more than 20,000 cases reported every day.
- An investigation is being conducted.
Online outrage has been quite strong in response to reports that a baby died in China as a result of Covid regulations delaying her medical attention.
A man in Zhengzhou said that paramedics had refused to visit his four-month-old baby because she was vomiting and having diarrhoea. This sparked outrage.
Later that day, she passed away. An investigation is being conducted.
In light of China’s rigorous zero-Covid policy, there have been several instances of people having difficulty getting access to healthcare.
For the first time in six months, China is dealing with a significant wave of the virus, with more than 20,000 cases reported every day. A current hotspot is Zhengzhou in the province of Henan’s center region.
Li Baoliang and his four-month-old daughter were confined at a quarantine hotel in the city on November 12 after Li’s wife tested positive, according to multiple Chinese news sites.
He claims that his daughter struggled to eat and fell ill two days later.
He requested an ambulance, but the paramedics wouldn’t come until the hotel conducted antigen tests, he told China News Weekly. Medical professionals, he claimed, flatly refused to visit his daughter when she tested negative “on the grounds that she was not critically unwell.”
He afterwards requested a second ambulance as her symptoms grew worse. Instead of taking them to a hospital close to the hotel, they were instead brought to Dengfeng, a city “almost 100km from Zhengzhou.”
Once there, according to Li, his daughter’s fever “sharply fell” and she passed away.
“When I heard, the news was like a bolt from the blue and I just couldn’t handle it,” Mr Li posted on Chinese social network Sina Weibo. He and his wife are currently being isolated at a Dengfeng hospital, and their daughter’s body is still in the morgue, reports.
“I am not opposed to epidemic prevention, but we must take care of key groups,” one says.
Many people think that this incident is far from unique.
“How many deaths have there been due to delayed healthcare?” one asks. “Are vulnerable groups being protected?”
“I’m heartbroken and angry,” says someone else. “But there are so many stories like this.”
The official death toll for Covid in China is 5,226; this number has remained constant since May.
However, there have been numerous reports of dangerously ill patients receiving delayed emergency care in secure locations or quarantine facilities.
In Lanzhou, a city in western China, there were irate protests earlier this month after a father claimed that delays in sending his infant son to the hospital contributed to his death from carbon monoxide poisoning.
A 14-year-old girl was reported to have passed away in Henan Province in October after becoming unwell at a Covid quarantine facility.
According to the South China Morning Post newspaper, authorities in the northwest region of Xinjiang started looking into whether a man’s death at a quarantine facility was caused by neglect after he asked for an ambulance but none was sent.
A lady reportedly miscarried in the southwest Chinese city of Chongqing earlier this week “because coronavirus limitations resulted in treatment delays,” according to allegations that are also currently under investigation.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, China has emphasized the significance of maintaining a “dynamic zero-Covid strategy,” which essentially entails isolating people after they test positive for the virus, even if they are asymptomatic.
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