Shanghai separates COVID-positive children from parents in virus fight (updated)

China Gold International Resources

02/04/2022 09:10

(Adds comment from Shanghai rumour buster WeChat account)
    By Brenda Goh and Engen Tham
    SHANGHAI, April 2 (Reuters) - Esther Zhao thought she was
doing the right thing when she brought her 2-1/2-year-old
daughter to a Shanghai hospital with a fever on March 26. 
    Three days later, Zhao was begging health authorities not to
separate them after she and the little girl both tested positive
for COVID-19, saying her daughter was too young to be taken away
to a quarantine centre for children. 
    Doctors then threatened Zhao that her daughter would be left
at the hospital, while she was sent to the centre, if she did
not agree to transfer the girl to the Shanghai Public Health
Clinical Center in the city's Jinshan district. 
    Since her daughter was sent to the centre Zhao has had only
one brief message that she was fine, sent through a group chat
with doctors, despite repeated pleas for information from Zhao
and her husband, who is in a separate quarantine site after also
testing positive.
    "There have been no photos at all... I'm so anxious, I have
no idea what situation my daughter is in," she said on Saturday
through tears, still stuck at the hospital she went to last
week. "The doctor said Shanghai rules is that children must be
sent to designated points, adults to quarantine centres and
you're not allowed to accompany the children."
    Zhao is panicking even more after images of crying children
at a Shanghai health facility went viral in China. The anonymous
poster said these were children who had tested positive for
COVID-19 and been separated from their parents at the Jinshan
centre.
    The photos and videos posted on China's Weibo and Douyin
social media platforms showed wailing babies kept three to a
cot. In one video, a groaning toddler crawls out of a room with
four child-sized beds pushed against the wall. While a few
adults can be seen in the videos, they are outnumbered by the
number of children. 
    Reuters could not immediately verify the images, but a
source familiar with the facility confirmed they were taken at
the Jinshan facility. 
    The Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center said, however,
that the photos and videos circulating on internet were not of a
"Jinshan infant quarantine facility" but were scenes taken when
the hospital was moving its paediatric ward to another building
to cope with a rising number of COVID paediatric patients. 
    This was done to "improve the hospital environment", it said
on its official WeChat account on Saturday, adding that it had
organised for more pediatric workers and would strengthen
communication with the children's parents.
    "Paediatric patients admitted to our hospital... are
guaranteed medical treatment and their daily needs taken care
of," it said. 
    Later on Saturday the Shanghai rumour buster WeChat account,
which is backed by China's cyberspace watchdog, published four
photos that it said showed the children's current situation at
the Jinshan centre. 
    One of the photos showed young children sitting in and
standing around beds that were arranged neatly in two rows,
though no adults were pictured. In another photo, a
hazmat-suited person attends to a baby lying in a cot. Only one
other adult, also in a hazmat suit, can be seen in the two other
photos. 
    The Shanghai government referred Reuters to the hospital's
statement and declined to comment further.
    A Shanghai health official said last week that hospitals
that were treating COVID-positive children maintained online
communications with their parents. 

    POST DELETED
    By Saturday, the original post had been deleted from Weibo,
but thousands of people continued to comment and repost the
images. "This is horrific," said one. "How could the government
come up with such a plan?," said another. 
    In some cases children as young as 3 months old are being
separated from their breastfeeding mothers, according to posts
in a quarantine hospital WeChat group shared with Reuters. In
one room described in a post, there are eight children without
an adult.
    In another case, more than 20 children from a Shanghai
kindergarten aged 5 to 6 were sent to a quarantine centre
without their parents, a source familiar with the situation
said.
    Since Shanghai's latest outbreak began about a month ago,
authorities have locked down its 26 million people in a
two-stage process that began on Monday.
    While the number of cases in Shanghai is small by global
standards, Chinese authorities have vowed to stick with "dynamic
clearance", aiming to test for, trace and centrally quarantine
all positive cases. 
    The U.S., French and Italian foreign consulates have warned
their citizens in Shanghai that family separations could happen
as Chinese authorities executed COVID curbs, according to
notices seen by Reuters.    
    Shanghai on Saturday reported 6,051 locally transmitted
asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and 260 symptomatic cases for April
1, versus 4,144 asymptomatic cases and 358 symptomatic ones on
the previous day.

    

 (Reporting by Brenda Goh and Engen Tham, Additional reporting
by Winni Zhou; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, William
Mallard and Clelia Oziel)
 ((brenda.goh@thomsonreuters.com; +86 (0) 21 2083 0088; Reuters
Messaging: brenda.goh.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))