Two people with relatives infected with the coronavirus (covid-19) shared with the BBC the difficulties of getting a bed in a Wuhan hospital and how painful it was to see a loved one die who did not receive proper care
Weeks after a new virus was reported in Hubei province in central China, the authorities suddenly changed the way to determine who is infected.
This change in methodology caused a considerable increase in the number of people infected, only because doctors began to include patients diagnosed in clinics and not only those who had been tested.
But in the early days of the crisis, the rapid spread of the virus through the city of Wuhan, coupled with the limited availability of beds in hospitals, meant that Many did not receive the treatment they needed.
Two residents of Wuhan shared with the BBC their tortuous experience trying to get a bed for their loved ones in a city overcome by the disease.
‘Grandfather, fromstire in peace ’- Xiao Huang
Huang was raised by his grandparents after his parents died as a child.
All he wanted was to be able to support his grandparents, both over 80, so they could enjoy retirement without worry, he says.
But in a span of just two weeks his grandfather died for the coronavirus and now its Grandma is in critical condition.
Huang’s grandparents began breathing problems on January 20. They could not go to the hospital until 26, due to the difficulties of moving around the city when the quarantine entered into force on January 23, and public transport was suspended.
They were diagnosed with the new coronavirus (covid-19) on January 29, but were not admitted to the hospital until three days later.
The hospital was so full that there were no beds empty
His grandparents had a high fever and difficulty breathing. They were offered only chairs in the hall.
Huang begged the staff and managed to get a large chair and a folding bed.
“There is neither a doctor nor a nurse in sight,” Huang wrote in his diary. “Hospitals without doctors are like a cemetery. ”
The night before his grandfather died, Huang was with them in the hallway. He talked with his grandmother all the time so that she didn’t realize that her grandfather was delirious, he says.
He finally took a bed three hours before his grandfather died. Huang was by his side until the last minute.
“Grandfather, rest in peace please. There is no pain in heaven, ”he wrote on Weibo, the Chinese platform similar to Twitter.
“Many patients died without the company of their relatives. They couldn’t even look at each other for the last time. ”
Now his grandmother fights for his life in the hospital and he spends as much time as he can with her.
“There is no effective remedy. The doctors told me not to have much hope, and that she could only recover on her own, ”he adds.
“We can only wait for fate to decide.”
Since February 7, Huang has not felt well and is now in quarantine for two weeks in a hotel.
“She started coughing up blood” –Da chun
In early January, Da Chun’s mother began to have a fever. The family was not particularly alarmed thinking it was a simple cold.
They hadn’t heard much about the mysterious disease that was surreptitiously spreading through the city of 11 million inhabitants.
But the fever did not go down, although he had been given injections at a community clinic.
On January 20, the same day that Chinese authorities admitted that the coronavirus was transmitted among humans, he took his mother to a special clinic for people with fever.
After looking at a scan of his chest and doing a blood test, doctors told him that his mother had been infected with the new coronavirus.
He received more bad news. The doctor told him that his mother, 53, could not be admitted to a hospital because they didn’t have the test kit to confirm the diagnosis.
The kits were only available in eight hospitals available at the end of January.
“A doctor from one of the designated hospitals told me they were not allowed to hospitalize my mother. It is the local health commission that assigns beds for confirmed cases, ”says the 22-year-old.
“Then the doctors couldn’t do the test to confirm that my mom was infected with coronavirus, and they couldn’t offer her a bed.”
Da Chun says his mother is not an isolated case. In a chat group with more than 200 members in WeChat for families of infected patients, people share similar stories.
His brother lined up in several hospitals to see if there were beds available. He went to the clinic with his mother and, during these visits, he saw patients dying inside the observation rooms before they were tested or admitted.
“The bodies were wrapped and the funeral home staff took them,” he says. “I don’t know if they will be counted as dead by the coronavirus.”
His mother’s condition continued to worsen. He started coughing up blood and had blood in his urine.
On January 29, his mother was finally admitted to the hospital, but he says there did not receive treatment and that the hospital did not have enough equipment the first few days, when she was hospitalized.
Da Chun does not lose hope that his mother will recover.
Feature: Joyce Liu Y GraceTsoi from the BBC. Illustrations: Gerry Fletcher
(So much Da chun how Huang they used their aliases in social networks to talk to the BBC).
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