Chinese doctor who blew whistle on coronavirus dies

Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, one of the eight “whistleblowers” who tried to warn other medics of the coronavirus outbreak but were reprimanded by local police, died from coronavirus on Thursday, the Global Times has learned.

Li, a doctor with Wuhan Central Hospital, initially warned his college classmates about the deadly virus in December 2019, urging them to take care. On December 30, he obtained a patient report suggesting SARS-like coronavirus positive signs. He then published information in a group chat saying that there have been seven confirmed cases of “SARS,” according to one of his Weibo posts. On January 3, local police reprimanded him for spreading “online rumors” and required him to sign a letter of reprimand.

Since then, he returned to work, the post said. After he received patients infected with coronavirus, he began coughing on January 10, then having fever the next day. He was subsequently hospitalized on January 12.

Li was among eight Wuhan residents who were reprimanded by local police in early January for spreading “rumors” about the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

The information they spread online claimed that cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the viral respiratory illness that battered China in the spring of 2003, were detected in some of Wuhan’s hospitals.

The residents were released shortly but news about the brief “detention” by the police angered many in the country as the novel coronavirus continued to spread in the country. Many said the eight whistle-blowers’ experience was evidence of local authorities’ incompetence to tackle a contagious and deadly virus.

A top epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) said in a recent interview with Global Times’ editor-in-chief Hu Xijin that we should highly praise these whistle-blowers.

“They were wise before the outbreak,” Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist at the CCDC, said, adding though that any judgment needs to be backed by scientific evidence.

Some Chinese netizens said local authorities owe him an official apology, claiming that it’s heartbreaking news. “We lost a hero,” a netizen said in a WeChat post, noting that if his warning could send an alarm, the outbreak might not have continued to worsen.