Babies are forcibly restrained to their beds while in coronavirus isolation wards in Hong Kong public hospitals for their own “safety and well-being,” Hong Kong health authorities claimed Wednesday.
“Generally speaking, the hospital will only consider the application of physical restraint on pediatric patients for the safety and well-being of the patient,” the Hong Kong Hospital Authority said in a statement March 17.
The body, which manages all Hong Kong government hospitals, issued the statement in response to mounting reports over the past week that Hong Kong public hospitals have physically restrained babies to their beds and made children up to five years old wear diapers while in mandatory quarantine in coronavirus isolation wards away from their parents.
Hong Kong’s government has mandated a strict containment protocol for residents who test positive for the Chinese coronavirus.
“Anyone testing positive for the virus is required to go to the hospital, while their close contacts must enter government-run quarantine facilities for up to 14 days,” CNN reported Wednesday. Parents who test positive for coronavirus must decide whether to enter quarantine “and send their children to the hospital alone,” or, if their children test positive, “accompany them to the hospital and risk infection themselves.”
One such parent, referred to by CNN as Ariel, told the news site she was recently forced to admit her two young sons to a Hong Kong public hospital with asymptomatic coronavirus cases.
“Ariel joined her boys about a day after their admission after spending hours on the phone trying to navigate the bureaucracy of a major health care system and allay the fears of her crying son,” according to the report. “The brothers – age 5 and 1 and both asymptomatic – were wearing vests that were tied to their beds to restrain them. They were covered in dirt and both wearing diapers, even the five-year-old.”
A nurse at the hospital told Ariel that the restraints and diapers “were standard practice because hospitals do not have the labor pool to care for every child with Covid-19 [coronavirus] and want to limit the risk to staff.”
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported an account that directly mirrored that of Ariel on March 17.
In one message on Facebook, it was claimed two brothers, aged one and five, were restrained, left unwashed and not given a change of clothes. The boys’ mother, who had been sent to the quarantine facility at Penny’s Bay, said she was finally allowed to visit them after repeatedly pressing the Department of Health and its Centre for Health Protection, only to find them crying in the beds surrounded by cornflakes, rice and other food debris.
Hong Kong, a city of more than 7 million people, has reported roughly 11,300 cases and 200 deaths from the Chinese coronavirus to date, according to official government figures. The city’s government began imposing “ambush-style” lockdowns on several neighborhoods and housing blocs across Hong Kong in January to contain the spread of new locally-detected coronavirus cases. The short-notice orders require all residents in the affected area to undergo mandatory coronavirus testing and prohibit locals from leaving their homes unless they present a negative coronavirus test result.
At least one resident of the Sham Shui Po area of Hong Kong was reportedly trapped inside a hair salon overnight after being caught off guard by one such lockdown in February. The same lockdown temporarily trapped a ten-year-old girl inside another hair salon in the area. The girl’s mother reportedly dropped her off for a haircut and left the salon to buy food, expecting to return minutes later. Local authorities issued Sham Shui Po’s lockdown order before the mother could return, however, effectively cutting the girl off from her parent.
“After the [Hong Kong] Home Affairs Department became aware of the situation, the girl was tested and had her information registered, then she was allowed to leave with her mother at our discretion,” a city government representative said at the time.
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