A Shanghai hospital is sending COVID-positive children and parents to different quarantine facilities, an online debate has revealed.
Key points:
- Ms. Zhou has not seen her 2-year-old son in more than a week
- Shanghai has separate quarantine facilities for children and adults
- China is working towards a “zero-COVID” strategy.
Unverified images of children, from three to one crib, attended by workers in hazardous material clothing circulated on the social media platform WeChat.
The center accused of taking in the children, the Shanghai Public Health Clinic Center in Jinshan District of the city, accessed social media to disprove the rumors, but in doing so confirmed the existence of the quarantine site. .
The center’s official channel said the photos and videos circulating on the Internet were not from the “Jinshan Children’s Quarantine Facility,” but were scenes taken when the hospital was moving its pediatric ward to another. building to cope with an increasing number of pediatric patients with COVID.
He added that it had been organized for more pediatric workers and would strengthen communication with the parents of the children following criticism from parents whose children have been housed in the facility.
Esther Zhao is one of those parents.
Ms. Zhou thought she was doing the right thing when she took her two-year-old daughter to a Shanghai hospital with a fever on March 26.
Three days later, Ms. Zhao asked the health authorities not to separate them because her daughter was too young to be taken to a children’s quarantine center.
Both Ms. Zhao and her daughter had tested positive for COVID-19.
Doctors then threatened Ms. Zhao that her daughter would be left in the hospital while she was being sent to the center if she did not agree to take the girl to the Shanghai Public Health Clinic Center.
Since her daughter was sent to the center, Ms. Zhao has only received a brief message that she was OK, sent through a group chat with doctors, despite repeated requests for information from Ms. Zhao and her husband. , which is in a separate quarantine site later also tested positive.
“I have no idea what my daughter’s situation is,” she said Saturday in tears, still trapped in the hospital she went to last week.
“No photos … I’m really looking forward to it.”
“The doctor said the Shanghai rules are that children should be sent to designated points, adults to quarantine centers and they are not allowed to accompany children.”
A Shanghai health official said last week that hospitals treating COVID-positive children maintained online communications with their parents.
People who tested positive for symptoms are being taken to temporary isolation centers (China Daily).
On Friday, Jinshan District came out of a strict blockade along with other districts east of the Huangpu River. That same day, the western districts went into confinement, leaving on Tuesday.
The city’s split blockade of 26 million people was aimed at zeroing in on COVID’s record figures, in line with China’s current pandemic management strategy.
The two-stage confinement allowed the entire population of the city to be tested.
On Friday, Shanghai recorded 6,051 asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 and 260 symptomatic cases.
Authorities have ordered mass trials of 26 million people living in the city. (Reuters: Aly Song)
The country where the virus originated in late 2019 has largely kept subsequent outbreaks under control thanks to a combination of strict border controls, long quarantines and specific blockades.
Mainland China reported its first deaths from COVID-19 in more than a year two weeks ago.
ABC / Reuters