China coronavirus: Wuhan leaders blamed for outbreak spread as death toll rises, hospitals beg for supplies

Doctor blasts slow response by local officials while state media reporter calls for ‘immediate’ removal of city leaders

Smaller hospitals in Hubei province launch public appeals for medical gowns, goggles and other basic equipment

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Hospitals in Wuhan and neighbouring cities are appealing to the public for basic medical supplies as criticism of the local leadership grows. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:00am, 26 Jan 2020Updated: 2:17pm, 17 Feb 2020

Pressure is mounting for local leaders to be held accountable for their response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, in the central Chinese province of Hubei, which has so far killed 56 and infected more than 1,900 people in the country.

Doctors in Wuhan have been among those calling for health officials to be held to account and, in an unusually blunt statement on social media platform Weibo, a senior reporter from the province’s official Communist Party newspaper, Hubei Daily, said the city’s leaders should be removed “immediately”.

“Like many people, I used to believe that a temporary decision to replace leaders with those less familiar with the situation would not be good for pushing through the [antivirus] work, but based on the worsening situation that is getting increasingly severe, those currently in the role have no capability of leadership,” reporter Zhang Ouya wrote on Friday.

“For Wuhan, please change the leadership immediately,” he said in the post, which was later removed.

It is particularly rare in China – where any criticism or scepticism is closely controlled under the country’s strict media censorship policy – for a journalist with a state-owned media outlet to make such a call publicly.