Chinese hospital ‘sorry’ for lost baby
BEIJING: A top health official in China’s locked-down northern city of Xi’an has apologised for the miscarriage of an eightmonth-pregnant woman after footage went viral of a hospital refusing her entry without a Covid test.
The city of 13 million people has been under strict home confinement for two weeks to stamp out an outbreak, in line with Beijing’s firm “zero Covid” strategy ahead of next month’s Beijing Winter Olympic Games.
The distressing incident was detailed in a social media post by the woman’s niece, which included photos and video of the woman sitting on a plastic stool outside the hospital surrounded by a pool of blood.
The post was later removed but not before it received hundreds of millions of views and sparked widespread anger online about the hardships faced by Xi’an residents.
“I deeply apologise to this patient on behalf of the city’s health commission,” Xi’an health commission director Liu Shunzhi said.
He said the hospital had been told to “compensate” the woman and apologised that “access to medical care was not smooth during the epidemic”.
The city said in an earlier statement the incident at Xi’an Gaoxin Hospital had aroused “widespread concern and caused a bad social impact”, adding that the local health bureau was investigating.
The hospital’s general manager has been suspended over the incident, as have “responsible persons” at the outpatient department.
According to the January 1 post that went viral on the Twitter-like Weibo platform, staff refused to admit the heavily pregnant woman for two hours because she did not have a negative Covid test from within the previous 48 hours.
Her niece wrote that her negative test result had expired just a few hours earlier.
The reports follow complaints from Xi’an residents over chaotic handling of the lockdown, including poor access to food and other daily essentials.
Another Xi’an resident said her father had died after several hospitals declined to treat his heart ailment “due to pandemic-related rules”.