The boy’s death on Tuesday sparked outrage on social media and is the latest incident to spark a blow to China’s strict zero-Covid policy. “I personally think he was killed indirectly,” the boy’s father, Tuo Shilei, told Reuters by phone from the city of Lanzhou, which has been under lockdown for several weeks. Tuo noticed that his son, Wenxuan, was unwell after his wife slipped and fell after being affected by gas fumes while cooking on Tuesday. Tuo said he tried desperately to call an ambulance or the police, but he couldn’t get through. After about 30 minutes Wenxuan’s condition worsened and Tuo said he performed CPR, which helped for a while. He rushed with his son to the entrance of their community, which was under strict lockdown. The staff at the gate wouldn’t let him through, telling him to call the neighborhood authorities or an ambulance. Frantic and unwilling to wait any longer for an ambulance, Tuo fell through the barriers with his son and locals called a taxi to take them to a hospital, where doctors’ efforts to save Wenxuan failed. “There was the Covid situation at the checkpoint. The staff did not act, and then ignored and avoided the problem, and then another checkpoint blocked us,” Tuo said. “No help was given. This series of events caused the death of my child.” The Lanzhou government and health ministry, as well as the Gansu provincial government, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. During last month’s Communist Party congress, President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s commitment to the zero-Covid policy that has made it a global outlier and led to disruptive lockdowns in cities across the country. Wenxuan’s story began trending on social media after a video of him receiving CPR while in the back of a truck was shared, along with a comment suggesting he died due to delays in treatment. A hashtag, “Three years of Covid was his whole life,” trended before it was deleted, a common occurrence on China’s heavily censored internet. “The child’s memory will unfortunately be of masks and nothing else,” wrote one Weibo user. “Is there any trust in the authorities?” another user wrote. A number of cases of people dying because they were unable to receive medical treatment due to Covid restrictions have sparked viral outrage this year, including several during Shanghai’s two-month lockdown. Tuo later said he was contacted by a person who said he was a retired local official and offered to arrange for 100,000 yuan ($13,000) to be sent to him if he signed a pledge agreeing not to publicize or seek redress for the incident. Tuo said he rejected the offer and instead demanded an explanation for his son’s death. On Wednesday morning, a funeral for Wenxuan was held in the nearby town of the Hezheng family. Tuo did not attend, for fear of being quarantined upon arrival.
