Donghae Hospital
Authorities in Shanghai are struggling to deal with a suspected wave of a coronavirus outbreak at a large hospital for the elderly, in a sign of the severity of the outbreak in China’s largest city.
Shanghai has not reported any new deaths from COVID-19 since the outbreak of the last wave of the virus.
But the BBC spoke to people working at Donghae Hospital for Elderly Care in Pudong district, east of the city, who described a dire situation and desperate attempts to help dozens of elderly patients, some of whom have died.
A nurse told the BBC that the first positive cases were discovered at the facility, one of the largest of its kind in Shanghai, three weeks ago.
The hospital was subsequently isolated, and specialized teams from the Municipal Center for Disease Control are trying to contain the spread of the disease.
Another aged care official brought in to the hospital last week told us she saw a patient die, and heard about a colleague who dealt with another dead patient.
But workers say it is difficult to know if the victims died from Covid-19 as there were so many infections.
The nurse told the BBC that she had been working and sleeping in the hospital before she was taken to the quarantine facility. She said a colleague told her the situation was getting “worse and worse” with new cases emerging “every day”.
She said medical staff and experts sent by the Shanghai government were also infected, saying hundreds of people there had contracted COVID-19.
She told the BBC: “At first, we continued business as usual, but then they started isolating every department and the manager told us the real situation was much worse.”
She said some patients refused to wear masks.
A hospital corridor is filled with piles of rubbish
Full trash cans and trash scattered in front of the hospital
A care worker who had been working at the hospital this week told the BBC that “sanitary conditions were very poor” upon her arrival.
The videos, captured from inside the facility and sent to the BBC, show full containers and full rubbish bags scattered in the corridors in at least one part of the aged care facility.
And there were complaints on social media from people who said that they were unable to contact their relatives in the facility.
A man told the BBC that his grandmother was in hospital and that it was very difficult to get information about her condition. The care worker who initially spoke to him was unable to provide further assistance after they tested positive and were placed in quarantine.
He says he has not been able to speak to his grandmother on the phone since shortly after the lockdown began on Monday. He said the staff who answered the call when he called could not give any details about her condition or the medications she was getting.
The BBC has tried to contact Donghai Hospital, Pudong New District Health Commission and Shanghai Municipal Commission for comment, but none have responded to our calls.
The BBC contacted a nearby office to organize funerals, and was unable to determine whether or not it had received any deceased patients from the hospital. The Shanghai Foreign Affairs Office was also contacted for comment, but no response.
But in frequent public statements, authorities confirmed cases citing the hospital’s address, though they did not name it specifically. The title has been mentioned nine times in official case reports in the past two weeks.
There is other evidence that the health care system in Shanghai is struggling to deal with some of the increasing demands placed on it.
On Thursday, health officials offered an official apology to the family of a 62-year-old man who died after being denied further emergency treatment for an asthma attack. The ambulance doctor who refused to transfer the patient was suspended from work.
Shanghai is the largest city in China with a population of about 25 million. The city has been locked down for nine days in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.
Officials were planning to seal off the eastern half of the city and test everyone who lived there, then impose the same lockdown on the western side of the city.
Despite plans to open Pudong on Friday, strict measures are still in place and test results are being delayed meaning many districts, and millions of people, are still living in lockdown.
A week before the lockdown was imposed, other officials said Shanghai was too big and too important to the Chinese economy to shut down the way other cities like Wuhan, Xi’an and Shenzhen have been.
But now a senior Communist Party official has admitted that Shanghai was not prepared for the outbreak. “Our awareness was not enough…our preparedness is not enough,” Ma Chunli said yesterday.
“We sincerely accept your criticism and are working hard to improve our performance,” he added in a rare public admission of failure.