A female community worker (left) and her colleague learn about residents' situation in Caidian district of Wuhan, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, in Central China's Hubei Province, Feb 7, 2020. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A 6-year-old opened the door for visiting officials who were on a routine body temperature run in Shiyan, Hubei Province on Monday amid community efforts to battle the novel coronavirus outbreak and to their surprise, the only company the child had was the dead body of his 70-year-old grandfather.

Local publicity department officers in Zhangwan district of Shiyan, disclosed to the media that the grandfather did not die from COVID-19, although the exact time of death remained unknown and was still under investigation.

However, a local community hospital source claimed the elderly man might have been gone for two to three days, and it is said that he did not allow the young boy to open the door, saying "there is virus out there."

This tragic news saddened the Chinese internet, as some 90 million netizens read about it and tens of thousands of them commented under the relevant hashtag. It was one of the top 20 most discussed topics on China's twitter-like Sina Weibo as of late Wednesday evening.

Many worried about the child's wellbeing especially his mental condition, suggesting that "community workers should get him some psychological help" and "hard to imagine what he had been through, and would even have starved to death if those officials had not been on their run."