More details have emerged regarding the health of late Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu, shortly before her death in Japan on January 31, 2025.

She was apparently only diagnosed with influenza on her third visit to the hospital in Tokyo.

Not diagnosed in first two visits

According to a story widely circulated in Taiwanese media, including  Next Apple and  ET Today , a person believed to be a tour guide who picked up Barbie’s family claimed that the late star had symptoms of cough and asthma on January 29.

At that time, her family had just arrived in the Japanese town of Hakone.

Hsu, also known as Big S, did not leave the hotel on January 30 and 31 to recuperate.

Her symptoms worsened on January 31 and she called an ambulance to take her to a hospital in Hakone.

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But doctors were reportedly unable to diagnose the cause of her illness, and the 48-year-old returned to her hotel that night.

She was then taken by her family to a small hospital in Tokyo for treatment on February 1.

It seems this is her second time in the hospital.

However, the small hospital was reportedly unable to make a diagnosis and referred her to a larger hospital.

There, on what seemed like her third visit to the hospital, she was diagnosed with the flu and given medicine, but still not admitted.

Her condition worsened that night and her family called an ambulance to take her to the hospital again.

However, she was declared dead at 7 a.m. on February 2.

Screenshots of her medical records have also been circulating online, showing that her oxygen saturation levels had dropped to 89 percent and she had significant lung congestion.

Additionally, a CT scan performed on February 1 showed severe lung damage.

Why isn’t she hospitalized?

A chest specialist named Xu Liheng (phonetic), said there could be two main factors leading to Hsu’s death,  Shin Min Daily News further reported.

One factor, Xu said, is that hospitals in remote areas of Japan, such as Hakone or Hokkaido, do not have emergency rooms, on-call doctors or intensive care units, meaning patients need to be transferred to another hospital.

The second factor is that Japanese doctors may also be reluctant to care for foreign patients due to language barriers, when learning about a patient’s medical history is important.

Shin Min further reported that news of Hsu’s death from pneumonia sparked a rush among Taiwanese to get flu shots, causing the website of the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to temporarily shut down on February 3.

Tainan City was also reported to have run out of flu shots in less than three hours on the same day, despite initially having more than 7,000 shots.

Shin Min likened the situation to the race to find a vaccine during the Covid-19 pandemic.