Baby dies in Covid quarantine hotel in China

Another child has died in locked-down China amid growing calls for the country to abandon its ‘zero-Covid’ policy.

The four-month-old girl died after suffering from vomiting and diarrhea in a quarantine hotel in the central city of Zhengzhou, according to a post by her father on on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Wednesday.

Her father — Li Baoliang — called emergency services early Monday morning, but when medics arrived and his daughter tested negative for Covid, they said her case was not urgent.

An ambulance finally arrived that night but took two hours to take the baby to a hospital 60 miles away. By the time she got medical attention it had been 12 hours since her father raised the alarm – and she was pronounced dead early Tuesday.

It is the second tragic fatality in weeks, after a three-year-old boy died from carbon monoxide poisoning in the city of Lanzhou. His father blamed health workers for ‘indirectly killing’ his son by stopping him from taking the boy to a hospital.

Beijing has promised people in quarantine zones should not be blocked from accessing emergency medical care.

China is maintaining a zero-Covid policy of quarantining those who have and are at risk of having the virus three years into the pandemic.

Just last month President Xi Jinping declared the strategy a success as he assumed a third term in office.

Internet censors were quick to scrub public discussions about deaths connected to restrictions, or to try to limit it in the official narrative.

While broadly supportive of the zero-Covid policy initially, an increasing number of Chinese people are calling for it to be scrapped.

The Chinese hashtag for ‘girl refused medical help died’ had been viewed more than 180million times by today, but was not showing up in the trending column.

It comes as tensions boiled over in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Monday.

Marauding protesters were filmed fighting hazmat-suited healthcare workers, destroying Covid testing centers and flipping police cars.

In a rare show of public anger over localized lockdowns, huge crowds of people crashed through Covid barriers and marched down the streets of Guangzhou. 

Videos posted and widely shared on Twitter showed chaotic scenes in Guangzhou’s Haizhu district late on Monday night as people charged down the streets and fought with white hazmat-suited health workers.

Footage shows a huge crowd of protesters tearing down Covid barriers and testing centres. One man is seen tearing down the gazebos at a makeshift testing centre and trying to kick the Covid health workers who were stood in a line.

Another video appears to show hazmat-suited health workers tasering some protesters who had approached them. One protester can be seen being pinned to the ground by a health worker, who is pressing his foot onto the man’s neck.

Chinese authorities have responded by adding another 250,000 quarantine beds to the city of 15million’s centers.