By Martin Quin Pollard
BEIJING (Reuters) – The father of a 3-year-old boy who died on Tuesday from carbon monoxide poisoning in northwest China says strict COVID-19 policies have “indirectly killed” his son over delays in receiving treatment, in a case that sparked outrage on social media.
The boy’s death is the latest incident to cause a backlash to China’s strict zero-COVID policy, with a hashtag racking up 380 million views Wednesday on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
“Personally, I think he killed indirectly,” the boy’s father, Tuo Shilei, told Reuters by telephone from the capital of Gansu province, Lanzhou, which has been on lockdown for several months.
Around noon on Tuesday, after his wife slipped and fell after being hit by the fuel fumes in the kitchen, Tuo saw that his son, Wenxuan, was also sick. Tuo said he tried desperately to call an ambulance or police, but couldn’t get through.
After about 30 minutes, Wenxuan’s condition worsened, and Tuo said that he had performed CPR, which helped briefly. She ran with her son in front of her network complex, under strict lockdown measures, but the one at the door wouldn’t let him pass, telling her to call the network government or an ambulance.
Desperate and willing to wait longer for an ambulance, Tuo burst through the gates with his son and some “good-hearted” citizens hailed a taxi to take them to the hospital, where the doctors’ efforts to save Wenxuan failed.
“There was the COVID scenario at the checkpoint. The staff didn’t act, then ignored and shied away from the problem, and then blocked us at another checkpoint,” said Tuo, 32, who owns a small butcher shop.
“It has not been provided. This series of occasions resulted in the death of my son.
The government and health ministry of Lanzhou and the provincial government of Gansu did not respond promptly to requests for comment. Reuters was unable to do so without delay at the hospital where the boy died.
At the ruling Communist Party Congress last month, President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s commitment to the zero-COVID policy that has made it an outlier and led to disruptive and draconian closures in the country’s cities.
“THREE YEARS OF COVID WAS HIS WHOLE LIFE”
Lanzhou’s incident began spreading on social media after a video was shared Tuesday showing Wenxuan receiving CPR in the back of a three-wheeler, accompanied by a comment suggesting he had died due to delays in his treatment.
A hashtag, “Three years of COVID his total life,” became a hot topic before being deleted, a common and heavily censored web phenomenon in China.
“The memory of the child will be a mask and nothing more,” Weibo user Banmiaoxiaozhou wrote.
“Is there still acceptance as truth with the authorities?” wrote another user, named lawyer Zhong Guohua.
Many cases of others dying because they couldn’t get medical care due to COVID restrictions have sparked viral outrage this year, adding to Shanghai’s two-month lockdown.
In January, a senior Chinese official warned hospitals not to turn away patients after a woman’s miscarriage and closure in Xian sparked fury.
Tuo said he then contacted someone who said he was a retired local official and came forward for Tuo to get 100,000 yuan ($13,743) if he signed a pledge not to go public or seek redress for the incident.
Tuo said he rejected the offer, not an easy explanation for his son’s death.
On Wednesday morning, a funeral was held for Wenxuan in the family’s nearby hometown of Hezheng. Tuo was not present, for fear of being quarantined when he arrived.
($1 = 7. 2766 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting via Martin Quin Pollard; Additional reporting via Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Tony Munroe and Alex Richardson)
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