Backlash against China’s Covid policy after 3-year-old boy dies in lockdown

Covid In China: The boy’s father said that his wife and child both fell ill on Tuesday, showing signs of gas poisoning and that the boy fell into a coma.

The death of a 3-year-old boy following a possible gas leak at a locked down residential compound in China triggered a fresh wave of outrage at Beijing's zero-Covid policy. The boy died in Lanzhou- capital of Gansu province- as his father claimed in a social media post that Covid workers prevented him from leaving their compound to seek treatment for the child. Lanzhou has been locked down since early October.

Covid In China: A worker in protective suit rides a bicycle. (AP)

Due to the delay the 3-year-old died, the boy's father said.

Following, the social media post there was an an outpouring of anger and grief as with several related hashtags racked up hundreds of millions of views on China's Twitter-like social media platform Weibo, CNN reported.

The boy’s father said that his wife and child both fell ill on Tuesday, showing signs of gas poisoning and that the boy fell into a coma. Even when the father made several attempts to call both an ambulance and the police but did not get any response.

Eventually, the father took the son to a hospital but it was too late by the time they arrive.

“My child might have been saved if he had been taken to the hospital sooner,” the father wrote.

China's stringent zero-Covid policy continues to disrupt the daily lives of residents as incessant lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing mandates continue in the country even as the rest of the world has begun to live with Covid. However, China's president Xi Jinping said that the country’s Covid policies “put people and their lives first.”