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When Esther Zhao brought her 2-1/2-year-old daughter to a Shanghai health center with a fever on March 26, she thought she was doing the right thing. Three days later, Zhao was pleading with health officials not to separate them after both she and the little girl tested positive for COVID, claiming that her daughter was too energetic to be taken to a children’s quarantine center.
Doctors then threatened Zhao that if she did not agree to transfer the girl to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre point in the city’s Jinshan District, her daughter would be left at the hospital while she was sent to the center.
Despite repeated requests for information from Zhao and her partner, who is in a separate quarantine site after also testing positive, she has only received one brief message stating that her daughter was alright, sent through a group chat with doctors.
“There haven’t been any photos… I’m so worried that I have no idea what my daughter is going through “She said this on Saturday, through tears, while still confined to the hospital where she had been admitted last week. “According to the doctor, Shanghai rules require that children be sent to designated points, adults be sent to quarantine centers, and you are not permitted to accompany the children.”
Zhao is getting scared even more after seeing images of people crying. Children with COVID-19 who had been separated from their parents blew up in China.
Wailing babies were kept three to a cot in photos and videos posted on China’s Weibo and Douyin social networking sites. A groaning toddler crawls out of a room with four child-sized beds tried to push to one side of the wall in one video. While there are a few adults in the videos, they are outmatched by the number of children.
Reuters was unable to confirm the images immediately, but a source familiar with the facility confirmed they were taken at the Jinshan facility.
On Saturday, the Jinshan centre did not respond to Reuters’ calls. The Shanghai government did not immediate comment for comment from Reuters.
As Shanghai, China’s most largest city and main financial hub, battles its largest COVID-19 outbreak in history, stories like Zhao’s and videos of separated children enrage residents and raise concerns about the costs of Beijing’s “dynamic clearance” policy to combat disease spread.
