China separates children from their families in Covid crackdown

‘I have no idea what situation my daughter is in’

PARENTS in Shanghai are being separated from their children when they test positive for Covid, with infants as young as three months reportedly forced into quarantine.

Since Shanghai’s latest outbreak began about a month ago, authorities have locked down its 26 million people in a two-stage process.

Viral images of crying children at a Shanghai health facility show wailing babies kept three to a cot. In one video, a groaning toddler crawls out of a room. Posts on social media said these were children who had tested positive for Covid and been separated from their parents at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in Jinshan.

One mother, Esther Zhao, told Reuters that her two and a half-year-old daughter was sent to the facility after they both tested positive for Covid. She has since had only one brief message that her daughter was fine. “I have no idea what situation my daughter is in,” she said yesterday through tears, still stuck at the hospital she went to last week.

The Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center said the scenes were videoed when the hospital was moving the ward to cope with a rising number of patients.

But the US, French and Italian consulates in Shanghai have warned their citizens family separations could happen.