Shanghai Nurse Dies of Asthma Attack After Hospital Denies Care over Virus Protocol

A nurse based in Shanghai, China, died on Wednesday from an asthma attack after she was denied treatment at a local hospital because the facility’s emergency room was temporarily closed in compliance with an anti-epidemic protocol designed to curb Shanghai’s latest Chinese coronavirus epidemic, China’s state-run Global Times reported Friday.

The nurse’s tragic and preventable death occurred on March 23. The newspaper detailed the incident on March 25, writing:

Zhou Shengni, a nurse who worked at the Shanghai East Hospital, who had an asthma attack at home on Wednesday, died after delayed treatment. At 7 pm Wednesday, Zhou’s family members took Zhou to Shanghai East Hospital for medical treatment, but Zhou was unable to enter the hospital as the emergency department of the south division of the hospital was temporarily closed due to epidemic prevention and control measures.

The emergency room in question was closed specifically for “environmental sampling and disinfection” related to the Chinese coronavirus, according to the Global Times.

Shanghai’s government confirmed Zhao’s death due to refused medical service in a press conference Friday. Wu Jinglei, the director of the Shanghai Health Commission, alluded to other people having been denied medical treatment in Shanghai in recent days under similar circumstances as Zhou.

“[S]ome residents have encountered problems trying to get medical treatment especially when it’s unrelated to COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus],” he acknowledged.

“Hospitals should be able to both focus on fighting the pandemic and maintain normal hospital operations unrelated to COVID-19, particularly emergency services,” Wu stated.

Zhang Wenhong, who heads a Shanghai panel overseeing the city’s approach to the Chinese coronavirus, admitted to failures by the Shanghai government on Wednesday in its handling of the city’s latest epidemic of the disease.

In a candid statement posted to his Twitter-like Weibo microblog on March 23, Zhang wrote:

[The] lives of people living in epidemic-restricted areas are not well guaranteed, the restriction period is too long, and frequent restrictions of hospitals cause inconvenience for other patients.

The Shanghai government has imposed mass lockdowns and forced quarantines on the city’s populace in recent days as it struggles to contain Shanghai’s latest outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus, which began in early March.

“In a meeting on Wednesday [March 23], Shanghai’s Communist Party leaders … said more districts would be locked down for mass testing from Thursday [March 24] to Friday [March 25], including the major financial district of Lujiazui, with residents told not to leave home unless strictly necessary,” Reuters reported.