The doctor who claimed to have given the alarm at the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic in China, and then was allegedly retaliated for it, has died from this disease, as reported by the state press on Thursday. The hospital where he worked and was being treated pointed out hours after he is in a critical situation but they are still trying to save his life. Then he confirmed his death.
Li Wenliang was an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, the Chinese province that is considered the epicenter of the coronavirus, and where several cities with millions of inhabitants remain in quarantine.
The disease has already spread to more than twenty countries, with almost 30,000 confirmed cases, but the vast majority are concentrated in China (where almost all 563 deaths have also been recorded).
When the virus, then still unknown, began to spread, Li shared information about the disease in a private chat with other doctors; Then there was a quarantined person in his hospital, with symptoms similar to another previous illness, SARS, which spread in the 2000s.
Li and another doctors were arrested on January 1 by local authorities, accused of spreading rumors. The Supreme Court later censored the reprisals taken against these doctors, ensuring that, if he had paid attention to them, perhaps the extent of the disease could have been halted, according to The Wasington Post.
For Wang Guangbao, surgeon and writer on popular science in China, speculation about a virus similar to SARS was intense within medical circles around January 1, but the arrests made by the authorities deterred many, including himself, of openly refer to the danger that came upon them.
