A Chinese doctor who was detained by police for issuing the first warning about the coronavirus outbreak in late December, died of the disease early on Friday, triggering a wave of anger and grief.
The death of Li Wenliang, 34, comes amid a mounting toll of the coronavirus outbreak in China since he first shared his fears among a group of friends about a new “SARS-like” disease in the city of Wuhan.
Health officials announced on Friday that the death toll had risen to 636 on the mainland with 69 new deaths reported until Thursday midnight.
More than 31,000 are now infected with the disease across China with Hubei reporting 2,447 new cases on Thursday; the central Chinese province alone now has 22,112 cases.
The WHO, meanwhile, has announced that 15 laboratories worldwide will act as reference testing labs for the Coronavirus. The list includes India’s National Institute of Virology in Pune.
“WHO will use the Shipping Fund Programme, established by the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, to send clinical samples from patients meeting the case definition of suspected #2019nCoV infection to international referral laboratories,” the organisation tweeted.
Wuhan Central Hospital, where Li worked, announced his death on its social media account and said that Li, an ophthalmologist, was “unfortunately infected during the fight against the pneumonia epidemic of the new coronavirus infection.” “We deeply regret and mourn this,” the post said.
The World Health Organisation tweeted: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. Li Wenliang. We all need to celebrate the work that he did on the virus.”
The final announcement came after hours of confusion during which Chinese media first announced Li’s death late on Friday night only to withdraw it a couple of hours later, claiming he was undergoing emergency treatment. Li is survived by his wife, pregnant with their second child, and his parents.
On December 30, Li chanced upon a test result of a patient who had been admitted to his hospital with a new, unidentified disease. He shared the information on a private WeChat group with seven other friends, saying that from the results it looked like SARS (a SARS had killed hundreds in China in 2002-03 but was initially covered up by the government.) Li later said he only wanted to warn friends about the disease but his post went viral.
The young doctor and his friends were soon summoned by the Wuhan police for spreading rumours, harassed, detained and then forced to sign a confession. After his release, he went back to work and in the second week of January, contracted the disease.
Li contracted the disease while treating a patient with an eye condition who was also down with the coronavirus, but didn’t know about it. He was hospitalised on January 12 and in the following days, as his condition deteriorated, Li was admitted to the intensive care unit. On February 1, he tested positive for coronavirus.
Last week, the Supreme People’s Court criticised Li’s detention, saying it would have been beneficial for the public if what he said was believed.
Many on China’s Twitter-like platform, Weibo, hailed Li as a hero who sacrificed his life to treat the sick after his death.
Within hours, the news of his reported death was trending on Weibo with more than 50 million having read it. At least 11,90,00 threads of discussions were about him. Many posted angry messages also, “The damned are not dead. The least damned are dead,” wrote one user in Chinese. “He didn’t even receive an apology before death,” wrote another.
