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Ophthalmologist Mei Zhongming, 57, said to have been infected after working long hours treating patients
He is the third doctor from the hospital to die from Covid-19
Mei Zhongming died at the age of 57 after contracting the virus while he was working at the Wuhan Central Hospital. Photo: Weibo
An ophthalmologist who worked with whistle-blower doctor Li Wenliang on the coronavirus front line in Wuhan has also died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Mei Zhongming, 57, contracted the virus while he was working at the Wuhan Central Hospital and died on Tuesday.
His 34-year-old colleague Li – who was silenced by police for sounding the alarm about the new virus strain – also died from the pneumonia-like illness last month, prompting an outpouring of grief and anger in China.
Mei is the third doctor from the hospital to die from Covid-19. Two days ago, Jiang Xueqing, head of thyroid and breast surgery, also died from the disease at the age of 55.
The hospital expressed condolences to Mei’s family and praised his 30 years of service in a brief announcement on social network WeChat.
Public mourning in China after death of coronavirus whistle-blower doctor Li Wenliang
According to the official numbers, 13 doctors and nurses have died from Covid-19 and more than 3,000 have been infected in China since the epidemic began in the central city of Wuhan in December. Hospitals in Wuhan and across the province of Hubei have been swamped with tens of thousands of patients, and health care workers treating them have also had to cope with a shortage of protective gear and medical supplies.
Part of the Wuhan Central Hospital is located just 2km (1.2 miles) from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market – the place the first coronavirus patients were linked to.
The hospital started treating patients who had been in close contact with the market in the middle of December, the director of its emergency department Ai Fen told China News Weekly last month.
Doctors reported the cases to management but no action was taken to protect medical staff at first, and they were warned not to talk publicly about the respiratory illness, the report said.
The Chinese medical workers on the front line of the coronavirus fight in Wuhan
posted a message to a closed group of medical school classmates on WeChat on December 30, warning them about an outbreak of a mysterious viral pneumonia at his hospital.
Two days later, Wuhan police announced that eight people had been punished for “spreading rumours”. It was later reported that they were all medical staff and one of them was Li.
The young doctor fell ill on January 10, later saying that he was probably infected by an 82-year-old glaucoma patient. “The patient did not have a fever, and I didn’t wear extra protection while taking care of her,” Li wrote in his blog. “I was careless.”
Li died from the illness on February 7, sparking widespread grief and fury over Beijing’s crackdown on “online rumours”, and calls for freedom of speech.
According to emergency department director Ai, staff on the front line at Wuhan Central Hospital began wearing N95 respirator masks and other protective gear in January as the number of virus cases jumped – but before authorities confirmed the virus was being transmitted between humans on January 20.
Despite the precautions, the first medical worker at the hospital was confirmed with the virus on January 10. More than 30 others from the emergency department alone have tested positive for Covid-19 since then, Ai told China News Weekly. The department has a staff of 200.
Jiang Xueqing, 55, head of thyroid and breast surgery at the hospital, died on Sunday. Photo: Weibo
The hospital did not give details of how Mei contracted the virus. But a report from the Wuhan Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference on February 18 said he had been infected after working long hours on the coronavirus front line.
Similarly, little information was released about Jiang’s death on Sunday. His colleague Li Hai told official newspaper People’s Daily that Jiang had been exhausted after working “non-stop” treating coronavirus patients.
Wuhan, China scrambles to handle massive amount of medical waste during the epidemic
Ian Lipkin, John Snow professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said the risks faced by health care workers were high, even with protective gear, as they had a very intimate relationship with their patients.
“In addition, those individuals who are working in hospital settings may be immunosuppressed because, frankly, they’re exhausted … the viral load that they receive may be larger,” Lipkin said in a briefing last month after visiting China at the invitation of the government.
The coronavirus has claimed the lives of several young medical workers. Among the youngest was 29-year-old respiratory and critical care doctor Peng Yinhua, who worked at the Jiangxia district People’s No 1 Hospital in Wuhan and died last month from the disease. Peng had planned to get married over the Lunar New Year holiday but postponed his wedding to help treat coronavirus patients.
Another 29-year-old, gastroenterologist Xia Sisi, also died last month after she became infected while working at the Union Jiangbei Hospital in Wuhan.
News of his death was met with an intense outpouring of grief on Chinese social media site Weibo – but this quickly turned into anger.
There had already been accusations against the government of downplaying the severity of the virus – and initially trying to keep it secret.
Dr Li’s death has fuelled this further and triggered a conversation about the lack of freedom of speech in China.
The country’s anti-corruption body has now said it will open an investigation into “issues involving Dr Li”.
The Chinese government has previously admitted “shortcomings and deficiencies” in its response to the virus, which has now killed 636 people and infected 31,161 in mainland China.
According to Chinese site Pear Video, Dr Li’s wife is due to give birth in June.
What has the public reaction been?
Chinese social media has been flooded with anger – it is hard to recall an event in recent years that has triggered as much grief, rage and mistrust against the government.
The top two trending hashtags on the website were “Wuhan government owes Dr Li Wenliang an apology” and “We want freedom of speech”.
Both hashtags were quickly censored. When the BBC searched Weibo on Friday, hundreds of thousands of comments had been wiped. Only a handful remain.
“This is not the death of a whistleblower. This is the death of a hero,” said one comment on Weibo.
A photo circulating on Twitter reportedly sourced from messaging platform WeChat also shows a message in Chinese saying “Farewell Li Wenliang” written in the snow on a riverbank.
Many have now taken to posting under the hashtag “Can you manage, do you understand?” – a reference to the letter Dr Li was told to sign when he was accused of disturbing “social order”.
These comments do not directly name him – but are telling of the mounting anger and distrust towards the government.
Media caption Coronavirus: Shanghai’s deserted streets and metro
“Do not forget how you feel now. Do not forget this anger. We must not let this happen again,” said one comment on Weibo.
“The truth will always be treated as a rumour. How long are you going to lie? What else do you have to hide?” another said.
“If you are angry with what you see, stand up,” one said. “To the young people of this generation, the power of change is with you.”
An epic political disaster
The death of Dr Li Wenliang has been a heart-breaking moment for this country. For the Chinese leadership it is an epic political disaster.
It lays bare the worst aspects of China’s command and control system of governance under Xi Jinping – and the Communist Party would have to be blind not to see it.
If your response to a dangerous health emergency is for the police to harass a doctor trying to blow the whistle, then your structure is obviously broken.
The city’s mayor – reaching for excuses – said he needed clearance to release critical information which all Chinese people were entitled to receive.
Now the spin doctors and censors will try to find a way to convince 1.4 billion people that Dr Li’s death is not a clear example of the limits to the party’s ability to manage an emergency – when openness can save lives, and restricting it can kill.
He was initially declared dead at 21:30 on Thursday (13:30GMT) by state media outlets the Global Times, People’s Daily and others.
Hours later the Global Times contradicted this report – saying he had been given a treatment known as ECMO, which keeps a person’s heart pumping.
Journalists and doctors at the scene said government officials had intervened – and official media outlets had been told to change their reports to say the doctor was still being treated.
But early on Friday, reports said doctors could not save Dr Li and his time of death was 02:58 on Friday.
Image copyright LI WENLIANGImage caption Li Wenliang contracted the virus while working at Wuhan Central Hospital
What did Li Wenliang do?
Dr Li, an ophthalmologist, posted his story on Weibo from a hospital bed a month after sending out his initial warning.
He had noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like Sars – the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003.
On 30 December he sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them to wear protective clothing to avoid infection.
Four days later he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau where he was told to sign a letter.
In the letter he was accused of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order”. Local authorities later apologised to Dr Li.
In his Weibo post he describes how on 10 January he started coughing, the next day he had a fever and two days later he was in hospital. He was diagnosed with the coronavirus on 30 January.
Media caption The BBC’s online health editor on what we know about the virus
Singapore has raised its Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (Dorscon) level from yellow to orange. This means that the disease is deemed severe and spreads easily from person to person but has not spread widely and is being contained
Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his US counterpart Donald Trump that China is “fully confident and capable of defeating the epidemic”. The country has introduced more restrictive measures to try to control the outbreak:
The capital Beijing has banned group dining for events such as birthdays. Cities including Hangzhou and Nanchang are limiting how many family members can leave home each day
Hubei province has switched off lifts in high-rise buildings to discourage residents from going outside.
The virus has now spread to more than 25 countries. There have been more than 28,000 cases worldwide but only two of the deaths have been outside mainland China.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 