Li Wenliang

Li Wenliang

Li Wenliang (Chinese: ???; 12 October 1986 – 7 February 2020) was a Chinese ophthalmologist known for raising awareness of early COVID-19 infections in Wuhan. On 30 December 2019, Wuhan CDC issued emergency warnings to local hospitals about a number of mysterious "pneumonia" cases discovered in the city in the previous week. On the same day, Li, who worked at Wuhan Central Hospital, received an internal diagnostic report of a suspected severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patient from other doctors which he in turn shared with his friends. He was dubbed a whistleblower when that shared report later circulated publicly despite him requesting confidentiality from those with whom he shared the information. Rumors of a deadly SARS outbreak subsequently spread on Chinese social media platforms, and Wuhan police summoned and admonished him for "making false comments on the Internet about unconfirmed SARS outbreak."The outbreak was later confirmed not to be SARS but a new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Li returned to work and later contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, from a patient who was not known to be infected. He died from the disease on 7 February 2020, at age 33. A subsequent Chinese official inquiry exonerated him, and the Communist Party of China formally offered a "solemn apology" to his family and revoked the admonishment of him. By early June 2020, five more doctors from the Wuhan hospital, since nicknamed the "whistleblower hospital," had died from COVID-19.

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