Coronavirus tests carried out on newborn baby abandoned in public toilet

Heartbreaking footage shows a newborn girl lying on the floor after being abandoned in a public toilet in China .

She has been taken to hospital to be tested for the deadly coronavirus .

Authorities were called on the evening of March 8th after a resident found the crying and completely unclothed infant in a toilet cubicle under Nanhe Bridge in Fucheng District in the city of Mianyang, which is in south-western China's Sichuan Province.

Footage shows the child crying loudly behind a cubicle door.

Officer Meng, with the Fucheng Public Security Bureau, reported: "The member of the public who called us said he had heard the sounds of a child crying in the toilet.

"He went to investigate and found the abandoned infant."

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The authorities arrived to find the baby having been wrapped in a blue and white cloth by local residents, but she was found by them with no clothes, food, or even a note, Meng said.

Doctors from the nearby Mianyang Central Hospital were called to check the child, who had no obvious birth defects, before taking her back to the facility.

Doctor Wang Xiaoshuang, head of the neonatal ward, reported that the girl had been put in an isolation incubator due to the risk that she may have contracted COVID-19.

Initial tests, however, suggest she has avoided the disease, but she continues to be monitored by medics.

It took Mianyang police less than 48 hours to identify the child's mother, Ms Xie, 24, through a DNA database before making an arrest, a statement on 10th March said.

A second DNA test confirmed Ms Xie as the child's mother, the authorities added.

Ms Xie told police she conceived the child out of wedlock and gave birth in her rental room in the early hours of 7th March.