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Toddler’s death raises new questions about China’s zero-Covid policy
China’s zero-Covid policy is under scrutiny again after an anguished father pleaded with indifferent local authorities for help while his son was dying from gas poisoning.
www.scmp.com
- Anguished father says his son was dying from gas poisoning while he pleaded with local authorities for help
- Three-year-old’s death is latest in string of heart-wrenching cases where urgent treatments were denied due to Covid protocols
The death, which happened on Tuesday in the capital of the northwestern province of Gansu, came to light after the father made a series of online posts on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
Tuo Shilei wrote that the drama began around noon when he had discovered his wife unconscious in their home. He tried to call an ambulance while trying to save her and after about 20 minutes, Tuo was able to resuscitate her.
Soon after, Tuo discovered that their son was lying on a bed unconscious.
After unsuccessfully attempting to use the same emergency procedure to revive the boy, Tuo said he tried several times to call for ambulances, the police and his community centre but was unable to get help.
An ambulance that had been dispatched 40 minutes earlier for his wife had still not arrived.
With the help of some neighbours, Tuo was able to climb over a compound barrier and then tried to seek help at a nearby checkpoint, but was refused and told to continue calling for an ambulance.
“At that time my kid was still breathing,” Tuo wrote on Weibo.
Finally, Tuo was able to find a taxi with help from police and residents.
About 10 minutes later, Tuo and his son arrived at a hospital, but it was too late. The boy was pronounced dead at 3pm, according to a report by Caixin. His wife was later treated at the same hospital and is in stable condition.
“If my kid could have been sent to the hospital earlier, he might have been saved,” Tuo said on Weibo.
As of Wednesday evening, Tuo said the local authorities had not contacted him. “I hope the community can give me a direct response. Why did they not let me go into an emergency centre? Why did they ask me to wait for the senior officials to be notified?” he asked.
In recent weeks, Lanzhou has seen a Covid-19 flare-up, and the family’s home is within a locked down area. On Tuesday, the city did not log any positive cases, but did record 51 asymptomatic infections, 29 of which were in Qilihe district, where the family lives.
In a statement on Tuesday, the local police said that “improper use of a liquefied gas stove has caused the death by carbon monoxide poisoning”.
In their latest statement on Thursday, Lanzhou authorities conceded the death had exposed “poor handling of the incident, weak emergency response capabilities and a rigid work style”, but did not admit any wrongdoing. An investigation was continuing, they said.
They said their investigation showed that a call for an ambulance got through at 12.18pm, but the ambulance had not been dispatched until 1.44pm, and that medical staff had tried to help Tuo online.
On Tuesday, Lanzhou authorities said that local officials should not oversimplify procedures and should avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to pandemic control, adding their attitudes should not be blunt and indifferent, a local party newspaper reported.
The boy’s death has sparked another round of online debate about the hefty cost of China’s stringent zero-Covid policy, and the pressure local officials are under to contain the highly infectious disease.
“Under pandemic controls, it is difficult to leave the home and the community. Even when you finally reach the hospital, it’s hard to get in without various nucleic acid requirements,” wrote one Weibo user.
“The epidemic outbreak has made it difficult to seek medical treatment numerous times … It’s really a repeated lesson [unlearned],” said another user.
The tragedy has also reignited public fear and anger about a string of deaths earlier this year that happened in other cities that were under lockdown.
In March, Zhou Shengni, a nurse at Shanghai East Hospital, went to her own hospital for help while struggling to breathe after an asthma attack. She died after being turned away because the emergency department was closed for disinfection.
In April, while Shanghai was placed under a two-month lockdown, Chen Shunping, a 71-year-old violinist, suffered from acute pancreatitis. Two hospitals refused to admit the man due to Covid-19 restrictions or closures. That night, Chen committed suicide by jumping from his residential building because he “could not stand the pain”, according to a note he left for his family.
Earlier in January, when Xian in central Shaanxi province was battling an outbreak, two pregnant women lost their babies after coronavirus-related restrictions delayed their treatment.
Both were kept waiting despite bleeding, and were then refused entry to the hospitals because they did not have valid Covid-19 test results, or because they lived in a “closed-loop management area”. By the time they were finally admitted, they had already lost their babies.
Xian has sacked or suspended several staff at the hospitals, and has since revised its Covid-19 rules to allow healthcare facilities to provide “green lanes” to pregnant women and patients with critical illnesses. Residential compounds have reportedly started to keep records of pregnant women.
Xinlu Liang
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