Virus whistleblower dies
JAPAN SAYS 41 ON SHIP INFECTED
JAPAN yesterday reported ed 41 new cases of a virus on a cruise ruise ship that’s been quarantined ed in Yokohama harbour while the death toll in mainland nd China rose to 636.
Among the deaths was s that of Li Wenliang, who landed in trouble with authorities for sounding an early warning about the disease threat.
Following an online upproar over the government’s t’s treatment of Dr Li, 34, the Communist Party said it was sending an investigation team to “fully investigate relevant vant issues raised by the public” blic” regarding the case.
Two docked cruise ships with thousands of passengers and crew members remained under 14-day quarantines in Hong Kong and Japan.
Before yesterday’s 41 confirmed cases, 20 infected passengers were escorted off the Diamond Princess at Yokohama near Tokyo.
About 3700 people have been confined aboard the ship.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced on Thursday that Japan would deny entry of foreign passengers on another cruise ship heading to Japan — Holland America’s Westerdam, on its way to Okinawa from Hong Kong — because of suspected virus patients on the ship.
The new immigration policy took effect yesterday to ensure border control to prevent the disease from entering and spreading further into Japan, Mr Abe said.
Meanwhile, a newborn discovered infected 36 hours after birth has become the youngest known patient. The number of people infected globally has risen to more than 31,000.
Dr Li had worked at a hospital in the epicentre of the outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
He was one of eight medical professionals in Wuhan who tried to warn colleagues and others when the government did not, writing on his Twitterlike Weibo account that on December 3 he saw a test sample that indicated the presence of a coronavirus similar to SARS.
The SARS outbreak in 2002-03, which the government initially tried to cover up, killed almost 800 people.
Dr Li wrote that after he reported seven patients had contracted the virus, he was visited on January 3 by police, who forced him to sign a statement admitting to having spread falsehoods and warning him of punishment if he continued.
A copy of the statement signed by him and posted online accused him of making “false statements” and “seriously disturbing social order”. “This is a type of illegal behaviour!” the statement said.
D Li wrote that he developed a cough on January 10, fever on January 11 and was hospitalised on January 12, after which he started having trouble breathing.
He also wrote that he had not in fact had his medical licence revoked, a reference to the sort of extra-judicial retaliation the communist authorities mete out to rights lawyers and others seen as troublemakers.
“Please rest easy, I will most certainly actively co-operate with the treatment and seek to obtain an early discharge!” he wrote on January 31.
He posted again on February 1, saying he had been confirmed as having the virus.
Within a half-hour of the hospital announcing earlier yesterday that Dr Li was in critical condition, it received almost 500,000 comments on its social media post, many of them from people hoping he would pull through.
One wrote: “We are not going to bed. We are here waiting for a miracle.”