China Covid: Anger at reports baby died due to delayed treatment
Beijing: Anger erupted after a father in Zhengzhou said paramedics had refused to see his four-monthold daughter, who was vomiting and had diarrhoea.
She died later the same day. An investigation is under way. The news follows numerous reports of people struggling to access healthcare under China’s strict zero-Covid policy.
With more than 20,000 cases a day, China is experiencing a major wave of the virus for the first time in six months.
Zhengzhou, in central Henan province, is a current hotspot.
Multiple Chinese news outlets are reporting on how Li Baoliang and his four-month-old daughter were isolated in a quarantine hotel in the city on 12 November, after Li’s wife tested positive.
Two days later, he says his daughter became unwell and was struggling to eat.
He called an ambulance but paramedics required that the hotel carry out antigen tests before agreeing
see them, he told China News Weekly.
As his daughter tested negative, he said medical staff then outright refused to see the child “on the grounds that she was not seriously ill”.
As her symptoms worsened, he called for a second ambulance in the evening. However, rather than take them to a hospital near the hotel, they were taken to one “nearly 100km from Zhengzhou” in the city of Dengfeng.
Once there, Li said his daughter’s temperature “dropped sharply” and she died. “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, Phoenix News reports.
The Zhengzhou Municipal Health Commission has said it is investigating.