Reports emerged from China of Covid positive children being taken and quarantined away from parents in desperate attempt to contain the spread of the Pandemic.

The 2-1/2-year-old daughter of Esther Zhao, reported Reuters, was taken to quarantine center after both the child and the mother tested positive on 26th March. Zhao has not seen her daughter since.

Children and babies like Zhao’s are reported to be detained to the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center in the city's Jinshan district.

Zhao has had only one brief message that her daughter was fine ever since, sent through a group chat with doctors, despite repeated pleas for information from Zhao and her husband, who is in a separate quarantine site after also testing positive.

The photos and videos posted on China's Weibo and Douyin social media platforms showed wailing babies kept three to a cot. In one video, a groaning toddler crawls out of a room with four child-sized beds pushed to one side of the wall. While a few adults can be seen in the videos, they are outnumbered by the number of children.

As Shanghai, China's most populous city and main financial hub, battles its largest ever COVID-19 outbreak, stories like Zhao's and videos of the separated children are angering residents and raising questions about the costs of Beijing's "dynamic clearance" policy to fight the spread of the disease.
-Reuters