Miscarriage casts light on Chinese virus edicts

BEIJING — Hospital officials in the northern Chinese city of Xi’an have been punished after a pregnant woman miscarried after being refused entry, reportedly for not having current covid-19 test results.

The city government announced Thursday that Gaoxin Hospital General Manager Fan Yuhui has been suspended and the heads of the outpatient department and medical department fired.

A government statement said the incident “caused widespread concern in society and caused a severe social impact.”

The statement was read at a news conference by the head of the city’s health department, Liu Shunzhi, who bowed in apology to the woman, who is recovering, and for “providing poor access to medical treatment and inadequate service for those with special requirements.”

The system will “open green channels for those with special needs and make every effort to ensure all received attention amid the pandemic,” Liu said, according to state media.

The pregnant woman was suffering abdominal pain but was forced to wait outside the hospital on a pink plastic stool for two hours Saturday. She then began bleeding uncontrollably, according to widely circulated accounts and a video taken by her husband.

Xi’an, a city of 13 million people, has been under strict lockdown for more than two weeks, prompting scattered criticisms over shortages of food and a heavy-handed behavior by authorities, who are under pressure to bring down covid-19 case numbers.

City officials said an investigation into the incident was carried out but gave no details. The hospital was ordered to issue a public apology, provide compensation and “optimize the medical treatment process.”

It wasn’t clear how many hospital staffers had been punished in total, but they joined a growing list of officials disciplined over their handling of the outbreak.

The city government Thursday said two other ranking officials with the Xi’an Emergency Center and Xi’an Municipal Health Commission had been given formal warnings by the ruling Communist Party.

Xi’an recorded Thursday another 63 cases of covid-19, reported to be the delta variant, bringing its total over its month-long outbreak to more than 1,800, with no reported deaths.

Officials have said the city has basically halted community transmission because all of the new cases were among people already quarantined.

While those numbers are relatively small compared with outbreaks in the U.S. and elsewhere, they come less than a month before Beijing is to host the Winter Olympic Games.

That has put officials under intense pressure to contain infections, prompting a stepping up of already severe measures under China’s “zero tolerance” strategy of quarantining every case, conducting mass testing and placing entire cities under lockdown.

Xi’an’s main airport suspended all international flights Wednesday. Domestic flights had already been put on hold as part of measures to seal off the city.