Lu, 99, was a long-time resident at Shanghai’s Donghai Elderly Care hospital, her loved ones secure that she was getting round-the-clock care at the city’s largest such centre.
That was before COVID-19 struck China’s biggest city last month, the country’s worst outbreak since the virus emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, infecting multiple patients, doctors and care workers at the 1,800-bed facility.
Orderlies posted cries for help on social media, saying they were overwhelmed. Relatives told Reuters that there had been several deaths.
She died there seven days later, the cause of death listed as her underlying medical conditions, her granddaughter said.
Among the questions she has about Lu’s final days was why elderly patients had to be quarantined separately, away from the care workers most familiar with their conditions under China’s quarantine rules.
Shanghai has become a test case for the country’s strict policy. Home quarantine is not an option and, until public outrage prompted a change, Shanghai was separating COVID-positive children from their parents.
From March 1 to April 9, China’s financial hub reported some 180,000 locally transmitted infections, 96% of which were asymptomatic. It reported no deaths for the period.
