China Vows Better Lockdown Medical Response After Child’s Death
The incident is the latest example of public discontent with President Xi Jinping’s rigid Covid Zero policy.
(Bloomberg) -- Chinese officials have pledged to improve emergency medical responses during Covid lockdowns, after the death of a child who waited hours for care due to virus curbs sparked nationwide outrage.
The Lanzhou government said officials had been “rigid and bureaucratic” and “lacked strong crisis management skills” when responding to the three-year-old’s case, in a statement posted to its official WeChat account Thursday.
“We will always uphold the principles of people-first and life-first in our work from here onward,” the statement added. Much of Lanzhou, which reported some 51 Covid cases on Thursday, has been locked down for weeks as authorities try to reduce infections in the northwest city of some 4.4 million people.
The incident is the latest example of public discontent with President Xi Jinping’s rigid Covid Zero policy, which is also increasingly weighing on economic growth as repeated closures disrupt business operations. Rare protests broke out in Shanghai earlier this year, after the financial hub underwent a chaotic two-month lockdown, during which some residents struggled to access food or medical care.
Overly strict adherence to Covid rules also sparked public outcry in Xi’an earlier this year. One man with a heart condition died after being turned away from three hospitals for not having a valid negative Covid test result, while an eight-months pregnant woman miscarried on the doorstep of another, in similar circumstances.
According to the Lanzhou government’s account, the father found his son unconscious on Monday afternoon, but was told to put on a mask when he sought help from city officials. Emergency services then spent time disinfecting an ambulance before heading to the scene, prompting the man to take a taxi to hospital. His son was pronounced dead an hour after arrival.
The incident was the second-highest trending topic on China’s Twitter-like Weibo on Thursday, attracting some 210 million views. Meanwhile, videos from earlier in the week that showed riot police asking angry residents at the boy’s compound to disperse appeared to have been scrubbed from the social media site. Some clips had shown residents making seemingly sarcastic remarks, such as: “The Chinese Communist Party is really something.”
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