The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said its “1922” hotline does not have the authority to dispatch ambulances or disease prevention vehicles, after the father of a two-year-old who died of COVID-19 said the hotline took too long to respond to his call for help.
The two-year-old boy, nicknamed En En (恩恩), began showing symptoms on April 13, was diagnosed with COVID-19 and admitted to an intensive care unit the next evening. He died of septic shock and brainstem encephalitis induced by COVID-19 on April 19.
He was the nation’s first case of a child dying from COVID-19 complications.
Photo: Chou Hsiang-yun, Taipei Times
His father has since last week been asking the CECC and the New Taipei City Government why it took 81 minutes to find an ambulance to take his son to hospital.
En En’s father on Monday was allowed to visit the New Taipei City Fire Department to listen to the audio recording of the 119 telephone calls between his wife and the department on April 14.
However, a netizen claiming to be a former firefighter at the department on Tuesday wrote that department officials on Monday morning asked its staff to pretend that they were making and receiving emergency calls, and turned the volume up when En En’s father visited the department.
The department on Tuesday evening said the scenario was meant to simulate the actual situation on April 14 for En En’s father to understand how it was busier than usual that evening.
En En’s father yesterday said that he had made two calls to the CECC’s 1922 hotline on the same day — the first at 5:38pm and the second at 6:08pm — to say that his son had lost consciousness.
The case was transferred to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Northern Regional Center at 8:44pm, and the center took another 12 minutes to contact the New Taipei City Department of Health, he said.
En En’s father said it was “unacceptable” that it took 143 minutes — from when the second call ended at 6:21pm to when it contacted the regional center at 8:44pm — for the case to be transferred.
He showed a formal letter sent by the CDC on Wednesday last week, in response to his request for the hotline’s records of handling his son’s case, which showed that the hotline operator had suggested that he continue calling 119 or the local health department, and that as the case involved the need for medical assistance, it was transferred to the regional center.
The CECC yesterday issued a news release saying that its 1922 hotline’s duties include consultation services about disease control, quarantine, vaccination, isolation, testing and infectious disease information, but it does not have the authority to dispatch ambulances or disease prevention vehicles.
It said the hotline operator would tell the caller how to handle the situation when it receives such calls and later follow up on the case, and that the boy’s family had been informed about the procedures.
Additional reporting by CNA
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