Chinese vice-premier ‘deeply ashamed’ over woman losing baby after Xian hospital turned her away citing Covid-19 rules

Name: Human chain delivers food in China’s locked down city of Xian #shorts
Uploaded: 2022-01-07T05:39:51.000Z
Duration: 31 s
Description: Human chain delivers food in China’s locked down city of Xian #shorts

Sun Chunlan acknowledges ‘problems’ in outbreak prevention work and says medical institutions should not refuse patients for any reason

The woman was reportedly refused entry to Xian Gaoxin Hospital because her Covid-19 test result had expired by four hours

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Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan said medical facilities should not refuse people treatment. Photo: CCTV

Jack Lau

Published: 1:39pm, 7 Jan 2022Updated: 3:31pm, 7 Jan 2022

Chinese Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan said she felt deeply ashamed that a woman in the northwestern city of Xian lost her unborn baby after a hospital refused to admit her because of an expired Covid-19 test result.

Sun said on Thursday that despite the pandemic, medical institutions should not refuse patients for any reason, and the episode showed that coronavirus containment efforts had been found wanting, state news agency Xinhua reported.

“That this problem arose was very heart-wrenching and I feel deeply ashamed,” she was quoted as saying. “It showed that outbreak prevention work had problems with not being sufficiently strict or down to earth. The lesson learned was deep.”

Several hospital staff members have been sacked or suspended and local health officials have been given warnings over the incident. A video circulated online showed the woman, who was eight months pregnant, sitting outside Xian Gaoxin Hospital with blood running down her legs. Her niece said she was refused entry for having a Covid-19 test result four hours too old.

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Human chain delivers food in China’s locked down city of Xian #shorts

Xian’s anti-epidemic task force on Friday banned hospitals from refusing admission on the basis of someone not having a negative test result from the previous 48 hours, saying people in that category would be tested at the hospital.

It also ordered all health centres to open for people with regular illnesses and said that they should not be closed because of staff helping to conduct mass testing.