Whole family in Wuhan contracts new coronavirus from grandmother
Grandfather dies, other members taken to quarantine centre
WUHAN, CHINA— Bella Zhang hung an intravenous drip on a spindly tree branch and slumped down on a large stone planter outside the crowded hospital. Her mother and brother sat wearily beside her, their shoulders sagging, both also hooked up to their own drips.
In recent days, Zhang, 25, a perfume salesperson with tinted blue hair, had watched helplessly as one by one, her relatives were sickened by the coronaviru s that was tearing through her hometown, Wuhan. First, her grandmother got it, then it spread to her grandfather and mother. She and her younger brother were next.
The family had pleaded for help, but the city’s hospitals, faced with an extreme shortage of beds, could not take them.
The city of Wuhan, where the new coronavirus originated, is struggling to get the epidemic under control. Overwhelmed and understaffed, hospitals have turned away many sick residents like the Zhangs, forcing them to go home and quarantine themselves in small apartments where they risk infecting other family members.
Nearly 17,000 people have been sickened in the city, and more than 680 have died, accounting for three-quarters of the total deaths in China from the virus. Authorities in recent days have been rounding up patients with mild symptoms and putting them into makeshift quarantine centres, which pose other challenges for treatment.
The government is converting sports stadiums and exhibition venues into these centres and promised they will be able to house more than 10,000 patients in total. Beds are arranged close together and in tight rows, raising concerns about whether such dormitorylike facilities could inadvertently help spread other infectious diseases among the patients.
Zhang, who was admitted to one of the centres Thursday with her mother, a retiree, saw it as their only option to keep from infecting her father.
For Zhang’s family, the first signs of trouble emerged in the week leading up to the Lunar New Year, when her 70-yearold grandmother, who was in good health, had developed a fever and started coughing.
By then, the new virus had been spreading in the city for weeks, though officials had mostly played it down.They took her grandmother to a clinic, where the doctor prescribed medicine for a cold and sent her home. Her grandmother continued to cough. Her fever would not recede. Then Zhang’s grandfather, already weak from lung cancer, suddenly took a turn for the worse. He died on Feb. 1 in the family’s apartment. But they had no time to mourn. Zhang’s grandmother was now deteriorating rapidly. They took her to a hospital, where she later tested positive for the coronavirus. Doctors later told Zhang and her mother they were infected too. Her brother, Allen Zhang, also tested positive. They were all told to return home.
Her father, 50, was the only member of the family who had not been infected. But Bella Zhang was convinced it was only a matter of time before her father was infected as well. They did not have any disinfectants or N95 respirators, heavy-duty masks that better protect against the virus.
“Every day you’re living together, drinking and eating together, sitting together and watching the news,” Zhang said. “No matter how hard you try, of course he’s going to get it.”