Covid-positive children are separated from their parents in Shanghai
Key Takeaways:
- Esther Zhao assumed she was doing the right thing when she took her 2-1/2-year-old daughter to a Shanghai hospital with a fever on March 26.
- Images of people crying Zhao's anxiety grew as news of Covid-19-positive children separated from their parents went viral in China.
- The Jinshan center did not respond to Reuters' attempts to contact it. The Shanghai government did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
When Esther Zhao brought her 2-1/2-year-old daughter to a Shanghai hospital with a fever on March 26, she assumed she was doing the right thing.
Zhao begged health officials not to separate them three days later after she and the little girl tested positive for Covid, claiming her daughter was too young to be taken to a children's quarantine center.
If Zhao did not comply with transferring the girl to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in the town's Jinshan district, doctors threatened to leave her daughter at the hospital, so she was sent to the center.
Despite frequent pleas for data from Zhao as well as her husband, who is in a separate quarantine site after also testing positive, she has only received one brief message that her daughter was fine, sent through a group chat with doctors.
"There haven't been any photos...
I'm so worried because I have no idea what my daughter is going through. "She said it through tears on Saturday while still stuck in the hospital where she had been last week. "According to Shanghai rules, children must be taken to designated locations, adults to quarantine centers, and you are not permitted to accompany the children," the doctor said.
Images of crying Covid-19-positive children separated from their parents went viral in China, increasing Zhao's anxiety.
Wailing babies were kept three to a cot in photos and videos posted on China's Weibo and Douyin social media platforms. A groaning toddler crawls out of a room with 4 kid beds pushed against one wall in one video. While a few adults are in the videos, they are outnumbered by the children.
Reuters did not immediately verify the images, but a source familiar with the facility confirmed they were taken there.
On Saturday, Reuters attempted to contact the Jinshan center but received no response. Reuters did not immediately return a request for comment from the Shanghai government.
As Shanghai, China's most populous city and financial center battle its largest-ever Covid-19 outbreak, residents are outraged by stories like Zhao's and videos of the separated children, raising concerns about the costs of Beijing's "dynamic clearance" policy to combat the disease's spread.