INFANT’S LOCKDOWN DEATH SPARKS FRESH ZERO-COVID ANGER
BEIJING: Chinese authorities faced more public anger on Thursday after the death of a second child was blamed on overzealous anti-virus enforcement, adding to frustration at controls that are confining millions of people to their homes and sparked fights with health workers.
The four-month-old girl died after suffering from vomiting and diarrhea while under quarantine at a hotel in the central city of Zhengzhou, according to news reports and social media posts. They said it took her father 11 hours to get help after emergency services balked at dealing with them, and she finally was sent to a hospital 100 kilometers (60 miles) away.
The death came after the ruling Communist Party promised this month that people in quarantine wouldn’t be blocked from getting emergency help following an outcry over a three-year-old boy’s death from carbon monoxide in northwestern China. His father blamed health workers in the city of Lanzhou, who he said tried to stop him from taking his son to a hospital.
Internet users expressed anger at the government’s “zero-Covid” strategy and demanded that officials in Zhengzhou be punished for failing to help the public.
“Once again, someone died because of excessive epidemic prevention measures,” one user wrote on the popular Sina Weibo platform. “They put their official post above everything else.”
The ruling party promised last week to ease quarantine and other restrictions under zero-Covid, which aims to eliminate infections with mass testing and snap lockdowns. But Chinese leaders are trying to dispel hopes the measures might end as other governments ease controls and try to live with the virus.
Zero-Covid has kept China’s infection numbers lower than those of the United States and other major countries, but shuts down neighborhoods, schools and businesses for weeks at a time. Residents of some areas complain they are left without food and medicine.
A spike in infections over the past two weeks has led officials in areas across China to confine families to their cramped apartments or order people into quarantine if a single case is found in their workplace or neighborhood.
On Thursday, the government reported 23,276 new cases in areas throughout the country; 20,888 of them with no symptoms.
Videos on social media this week that said they were shot in Guangzhou showed angry residents knocking over barriers set up by white-garbed health workers. The 1.8 million residents of the city’s Haizhu district were confined to their homes last week, but some restrictions were lifted on Monday.
A total of 1,659 cases were reported in Henan province, another hot spot where Zhengzhou is located.
The four-month-old girl in Zhengzhou and her father were sent into quarantine last Saturday, according to news reports and social media.
An account on social media that said it was written by the father, identified as Li Baoliang, said he started calling the emergency hotline at noon on Monday after she suffered vomiting and diarrhea. It said the hotline responded the girl wasn’t sick enough to need emergency care. The account said health workers at the quarantine site called an ambulance, but the crew refused to deal with them because the father tested positive for the virus.
The girl finally arrived at a hospital at 11 p.m., but died despite efforts to revive her, the account said.
The account attributed to the father complained the emergency hotline acted improperly, nearby hospitals weren’t ready to help and the hospital where they ended up failed to provide “timely treatment” and gave him “seriously false” information.
“Epidemic prevention and control people, do you not have a heart?” said another post on Sina Weibo.
The Zhengzhou city government said the incident was under investigation, according to news reports.
A report on the social media account of news outlet China News Weekly was reposted 11,000 times and received 45,000 “likes,” according to Sina Weibo.