Shanghai funeral parlor workers returned a body bag to a retirement home after noticing the person inside was still alive.
A Shanghai district government confirmed the incident and said five officials have been punished and the license of a doctor revoked.
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With the video circulating widely online, the development could lower confidence in public services amid weeks of coronavirus lockdown measures in the city.
In the footage of Sunday’s incident, two funeral parlor workers in full protective suits are seen carrying a yellow body bag out of a hearse.
They then open the bag and appeared to show a medical worker from the Xinchangzheng Nursing Home the person was still alive.
He or she was then swiftly returned inside the home.
Speaking behind the camera, the Shanghai resident who recorded the video can be heard saying the nursing home “messed up.”
The incident triggered outrage on Chinese social media, with people questioning the reliability of the social welfare system during the prolonged lockdown.
The government of Putuo district where the nursing home is located said in a statement Monday that the person in the video has been receiving treatment in a hospital and has stable vital signs.
Authorities in Shanghai are slowly beginning to ease lockdown restrictions that have confined most of the city’s 26 million people to their apartments, housing compounds or immediate neighborhoods for close to a month, and in some cases longer.
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