tirsdag 28. januar 2020

Confusion and lost time: how testing woes slowed China's coronavirus response

Yang Zhongyi was still waiting on Monday for a coronavirus test in the Chinese city of Wuhan two weeks after she started to show signs of a fever, even though doctors privately told her family that she almost certainly has been infected, her son Zhang Changchun told Reuters.

Yang, 53, is just one of many Wuhan inhabitants finding it difficult to get tested or receive treatment for the new form of coronavirus, which authorities say has infected 2,800 people and killed at least 80 in China, a situation that may be contributing to the spread of the disease. Yang has been unable to gain full-time admission to a hospital, her son said. She has been put on drips in unquarantined areas at four separate hospitals in the city to treat her deteriorating lungs, he said, while he is doing what he can to get her tested or admitted full-time.

“My brother and I have been queuing at the hospital every day. We go at 6 and 7 in the morning, and queue for the whole day, but we don’t get any new answers,” Zhang told Reuters. “Every time the responses are the same: ‘There’s no bed, wait for the government to give a notice, and follow the news to see what’s going on.’ The doctors are all very frustrated too.”