Today we pay tribute to Li Wenliang, the Chinese coronavirus whistleblower. ● Li Wenliang (12 October 1986 – 7 February 2020) was a Chinese ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital who on 30 December 2019 warned fellow colleagues about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), later acknowledged as COVID-19, on WeChat. He became a whistleblower when his warnings were later shared publicly. ● On 3 January 2020, Wuhan police summoned and admonished him for “making false comments on the Internet”. ● On 7 January, Li contracted the coronavirus when he saw an infected patient at his hospital. The patient suffered from acute angle-closure glaucoma and developed a fever the next day.
Li then began to suspect that the patient might have a coronavirus infection. ● Li developed a fever and cough on 10 January, which soon became severe. Doctor Yu Chengbo, a Zhejiang medical expert sent to Wuhan, told media that although most young patients do not tend to develop severe conditions, the glaucoma patient whom Li saw on 8 January was a storekeeper at Huanan Seafood Market with a high viral load, which could have exacerbated Li’s infection. ● On 12 January, Li was admitted to intensive care at Houhu Hospital District, Wuhan Central Hospital, where he was quarantined, treated, and tested for the virus several times until he tested positive for the infection on 30 January. ● He was diagnosed with the virus infection on 1 February.
While hospitalized, Li posted a message online vowing to return to the front lines after his recovery. ● On 6 February, while Li was on the phone with a friend, he told the friend that he was having trouble breathing and that his oxygen saturation had dropped to 85%. At around 19:00, he was sent to the emergency room. According to China Newsweek, his heartbeat stopped at 21:30. In social media posts, the Chinese state media reported that Li had died