A resident of a Shanghai nursing home was mistakenly taken to the morgue while he was still alive.state media reported, as the city’s Covid-19 outbreak and the prolonged lockdown led medical facilities and elderly care to the breaking point.
The municipal government confirmed the incident and said it has launched an investigation.reported local media, quoted by Bloomberg. Although the nursing home apologized, the error provoked widespread anger and condemnation among Chineseaccording to discussions on social media.
The error comes as Shanghai’s lockdown enters its fifth week and new COVID cases continue to number in the thousands each day.
Most of Shanghai’s 25 million people have been confined to their homes for weeks.as the city grapples with a major covid outbreak. Hundreds of thousands of people positive for the coronavirus have been taken to makeshift isolation centerssince China does not allow them to quarantine at home.
The harsh restrictions and mandatory isolation of all virus cases and close contacts have created havoc in the city, with people who cannot access essential health care. Most of the more than 400 deaths in the latest wave have been older people with underlying health conditions, with reports that some nursing homes reported no deaths.
While it is not clear if the person was infected with Covid or vaccinated, China’s low inoculation rate among the elderly remains the country’s Achilles’ heel in the fight against the pandemic. In Shanghai, only 62% of residents over the age of 60 have been fully vaccinated, and only 15% of the population over the age of 80 have received two injections. The median age of deaths reported on Sunday was 84, according to the local government.
“This is murder”wrote one Weibo user among a series of other angry posts. “The crisis of confidence in the city is getting worse.”
The nursing care resident was sent to the hospital for treatment and his vital signs are stabilizing.local media reported. The Putuo District Civil Affairs Bureau, where the house is located, said it will handle the accident seriously and will release the findings once the investigation is complete.
“This has nothing to do with the epidemic, nor with any kind of normal negligence and irresponsibility, it is a serious dereliction of duty that almost led to death.”he wrote on his personal Weibo account Hu Xijinformer editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper Global Times and influential commentator.
Extreme measures
Shanghai was this Monday subject to a series of sanitary restrictions, while the new cases decreased to about 7,000, with 32 deaths.
The ruthless politics carried out in China “zero covid” finds its most complete expression in Shanghai.
The local authorities of this megalopolis did not respond to questions about the situation in the city.
Those responsible for this important economic center are surely under great pressure to apply the “zero covid” policy at the community level, that is, to prevent transmission outside the quarantine centers, he said. Yanzhong Huang, of the Council on Foreign Relations based in New York.
“When they are under strong pressure from above to apply the objectives of the “zero covid” policy, they are much more likely to resort to very harsh and excessive measures”, argues.
“Taking away people who are negative for the virus could be considered a preventive strategy (…)” Huang aggregate
According to the official agency Xinhua, tens of thousands of people who had contact with those contaminated with the virus have been quarantined in neighboring provinces
But the official press has not mentioned that virus-negative people have been displaced.
The Shanghai authorities have been criticized for the harsh confinement they have imposed on the population.
(With information from Bloomberg and AFP)
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