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Death of Lanzhou Toddler after Late Emergency Response Sparks Online Anger over China’s Covid Policies

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The emergency number was dialed at 12:15. The ambulance arrived at 14:03. Chinese social media users are lashing out at Lanzhou authorities and expressing anger over a failing emergency response system in light of the death of a 3-year-old child in one of the city’s Covid ‘high-risk areas.’

The death of a 3-year-old boy after carbon monoxide poisoning in Lanzhou, Gansu, has sparked anger on Chinese social media this week since there was a significant delay in medical care for the child due to epidemic prevention measures.

The incident happened early in the afternoon of November 1st in Lanzhou’s Qilihe District, where the 3-year-old boy and his mother suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning inside their home, both losing consciousness. The child was allegedly still alive and breathing after he was carried outside.

According to a WeChat report about the case, the father initially tried to rush the child to the hospital by himself but was stopped at an epidemic checkpoint where the staff did not allow them to go on.

Lanzhou is currently dealing with a local Covid outbreak, and the city of over three million inhabitants now has eight ‘high-risk areas’ – five of them are in the city’s Qilihe District.

After contacting emergency services, nothing reportedly happened for approximately half an hour, and the ambulance did not arrive. The father, whom we will refer to as ‘Mr Tuo’, tried to get through to the emergency hotline a second time, but was unsuccessful.

Thanks to the help of bystanders and neighbors, Mr Tuo eventually was able to get medical help for his wife and son. But by then, a lot of time had already gone to waste. Both the child and his mother arrived at the hospital after 14:00 in the afternoon. At around 15:00, the 3-year-old boy was pronounced dead.

The incident triggered outrage on Chinese social media, where people focused on the efficiency of emergency channels during local lockdowns amidst China’s zero Covid policy. Many people also discussed the apparent lack of humanity in some local lockdown measures.

“This child was only three years old. The epidemic has been going on for three years. He did not even get to see this world, and now he’s gone,” one commenter wrote on Weibo. “The epidemic prevention measures are harming so many people, what is Covid prevention really for? Where is your conscience?”

The Lanzhou Qilihe District Emergency Management Bureau sent out a statement on the night of November 1st, confirming that two family members suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning inside the family home. After being sent to hospital, the statement said, one person passed away after unsuccessful CPR, while the other was in stable condition. The statement warned people to make sure to correctly use gas-utilizing appliances inside their homes.

Although the statement, published by China Newsweek (中国新闻周刊), received over 140,000 likes and nearly 20,000 comments on Wednesday, not a single reply was available to view on Weibo at the time of writing, with the platform giving the standard notification that “comments are currently not available” (“抱歉,该内容暂时无法查看”).

The hashtag “Notification by Lanzhou Qilihe” (#兰州七里河通报#) received over 450 million views on Weibo on Wednesday.

This is the second major incident this month where a child’s death is linked to a delay or unavailability of emergency services. In October, the death of a 14-year-old girl at a Ruzhou Covid quarantine site in Pingdingshan, Henan Province, also sparked anger on Chinese social media. There were no doctors at the quarantine site and the staff initially did not arrange medical care for the girl, despite the family pleading for help multiple times.

The current outburst of anger has been building up for months. Chinese social media users have repeatedly expressed despair and frustrations over similar issues throughout 2022, with many stories circulating online of patients dealing with medical emergencies and not getting the help they need due to local lockdowns and epidemic prevention measures, from Xi’an in January to Shanghai in April.

“Who is lying, who is covering things up? Where is your conscious? Tonight, a father is grieving his loss,” one popular Weibo author wrote, posting an image with the words: “Will this world ever be ok?”

The online censorship surrounding the Lanzhou case only fuelled public anger. Another Weibo blogger wrote: “It is ridiculous that when the child needed an ambulance, it did not show up after waiting so long. Yet when it’s about suppressing the victim’s family and the crowds protesting over this, you’re faster than light. Unless you shut down the entire internet in Lanzhou, there is no way for you to cover this up. Everyone in China knows it’s a lie, it’s useless to make people shut up.”

“This is crazy. These past few years there’s been too many things that are just beyond belief. Don’t the lives of ordinary people matter? How many people have lost their income and their jobs because of the pandemic, and still they need to join the rat race. I can’t blame the people with money for wanting to migrate.”

“He did not catch Covid, yet he died because of Covid,” another person wrote.

Timeline of Events

In light of all the online discussions over the incident, Lanzhou City posted a statement on November 3rd in which they expressed their sadness over the 3-year-old’s death and further detailed what allegedly happened on November 1st.

According to the report, the emergency hotline (120) first spoke to the father, Mr Tuo, at 12:18. He called three times before from 12:15 to 12:18, but did not connect with 120 because he allegedly did not call “long enough.”

At 12:18, the 120 emergency response staff supposedly only received information about a woman falling and being unconscious. Since the incident took place in a ‘high-risk area,’ the dispatcher first contacted Lanzhou City Medical Management via WeChat, followed by an incredibly time-wasting and fuzzy process including online communications involving Lanzhou City Medical Management’s medical staff, the Health Commission of the Qilihe District, doctors at the Qilihe District Hospital, and Mr Tuo.

A doctor at the Qilihe District Hospital allegedly received information about the case at 12:32 and then attempted to reach Mr Tuo by phone multiple times from 12:32 until 13:06. It was not until 13:19, after the doctor finally spoke to Tuo and had given him first aid instructions, that an ambulance was dispatched.

The report claims that it was only at 13:23, over an hour after Tuo’s first call, that they learned about a young child being in need of emergency treatment as well. Two more emergency calls were made at 13:32 and 13:34. Apparently, the seriousness of the situation was finally realized at around 13:44, an hour and a half after Tuo’s initial plea for help, as ambulance staff got the order to stop disinfecting their ambulance and immediately rush to the scene.

At one point, the Lanzhou City report also mentions that Tuo was not wearing a mask when desperately pleading for help at the epidemic checkpoint at around 13:15, presenting this as if it were an important fact in this life-and-death situation.

At 13:55, Tuo finally received help from a local officer in stopping a taxi, which took him and his little son to the children’s hospital. Meanwhile, it took the ambulance until 14:03 to arrive at the scene, which is when they provided medical assistance to Tuo’s wife and took her to the hospital.

Mr Tuo’s 3-year-old son reportedly already had no pulse when arriving at the hospital at 14:05. After unsuccessful CPR efforts, the little boy was declared dead at 15:00.

The boy’s mother was able to get help at the hospital, made a recovery, and was later discharged.

The report concludes that Lanzhou authorities have learned from this tragic experience, writing that its emergency rescue system is clearly “not smooth”, the emergency response capacity “not strong”, and that they will do all they can to prevent such incidents from happening again in the future.

On Weibo, where one hashtag related to the report received over 330 million views (#兰州通报儿童中毒死亡事件#), many netizens were in disbelief after reading the timeline of events.

“So today I learned that when someone does not answer the phone, it is because the other party did ‘not call long enough,'” one person wrote.

“Lives don’t matter, whether or not you wear a face mask matters,” others replied.

One Weibo user wrote: “They dispatched an ambulance at 13:19 and it did not arrive until 14:03?”

Some also wondered why the first emergency response was to deal with the situation through online consultation, although Tuo had already indicated his wife was unconscious. “That one officer showed some humanity, but the rest of them acted like robots,” a popular comment said.

Amid the online outpouring of anger, the former Global Times editor-in-chief and well-known commentator Hu Xijin (@胡锡进) also responded to this issue. In his post, Hu focused on the last paragraph of the Lanzhou City statement, reiterating that this incident made them aware of their sluggish and inept emergency response system. Hu expressed that he hoped this tragedy could serve as a lesson, not just for Lanzhou but for every region across China, that every minute counts when it’s about rescuing people’s lives.

Despite the report and Hu’s comments, the anger remains. One popular comment on Douyin said: “You can all draw your lessons from this, but what about the child? Three years old. Gone. A family has been torn. How many more cases do you need in order to learn your lesson?”

Another commenter wrote: “I am not afraid of the epidemic, it’s the people I’m afraid of. My heart goes out to this child.”

By Manya Koetse , with contributions by Miranda Barnes

 

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