‘It does not look good’: Wuhan doctors press on in dire conditions after coronavirus whistle-blower’s death

Another doctor says he was questioned by police for alerting colleagues to outbreak late last year

Medical personnel struggle to treat flood of patients with dwindling supplies of protective equipment

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A nurse checks on a patient in the isolation ward for 2019-nCoV patients at a hospital in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province. Photo: Chinatopix via AP

Published: 9:10pm, 8 Feb 2020Updated: 5:32pm, 14 Feb 2020

Liu Wen has no regrets about alerting his colleagues more than a month ago to a disease outbreak at a seafood market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, despite being hauled into a police station over the matter.

Liu, a doctor at Wuhan Hannan Red Cross Hospital, sent the warning through a WeChat group on December 30, he told Chinese news service Caixin.

He said he sent the warning because the hospital was close to the seafood market.

The next day, hospital management called him in and asked him where he got the information. And two days after that, he was questioned by police, according to the report.

His treatment is similar to that meted out to Li Wenliang, a Wuhan doctor who also cautioned medical school classmates about an outbreak of an unknown illness linked to the market.

Li, too, was summoned by police and told not to talk about the outbreak. Li died on Friday morning after contracting the coronavirus that has killed more than 700 people, most of them in Hubei province.