Chinese authorities faced more public outrage Thursday after being blamed for the death of a second child due to strict enforcement of coronavirus measures, adding to frustration over controls confining millions of people to their homes and causing spats between residents and care workers. health.
A 4-month-old baby died after suffering vomiting and diarrhea while in quarantine at a hotel in the central city of Zhengzhou, according to news reports and social media posts, reported by the Associated Press.
These reports stated that it took her father eleven hours to get medical help after the emergency authorities refused to deal with them, but she was finally sent to a hospital a hundred kilometers away.
The death came after the ruling Communist Party promised this month not to prevent those under quarantine from getting emergency help, following a protest over the death of a 3-year-old boy from carbon monoxide in the country’s northwest, according to the Associated Press.
The “Zero Covid” strategy kept the infection numbers in China lower than those recorded in the United States and other major countries, but it closed neighborhoods, schools and businesses for weeks, and residents of some areas complain of being left without food and medicine.
A sharp rise in infections over the past two weeks has led to officials confining families to their cramped apartments in areas across China, and ordering people to be quarantined if a single infection is found in their workplace or neighborhood.
On Thursday, the National Health Committee announced that China had recorded 23,276 new cases of coronavirus on November 16, of which 2,388 were symptomatic and 20,888 were asymptomatic, according to Archyde.com.
On Wednesday, China recorded 20,199 new infections, of which 1,623 were symptomatic and 18,576 were asymptomatic.
As of Wednesday, mainland China had recorded 279,431 cases of coronavirus symptoms, and the country had not recorded any new deaths, keeping the death toll at 5,226, according to Archyde.com.