China: Coronavirus kills whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang

The Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, who was said to be the whistleblower of the deadly Coronavirus, has succumbed to the virus in the early hours on Friday at the Wuhan hospital.

"Our hospital's ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected with coronavirus during his work in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic," the hospital statement read on Friday, as quoted by international media.

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First called a fearmonger by local officials

He first broke out the information about the deadly virus in December by informing his medical school alumnus about the patients affected with a SARS-like illness in his hospital in Wuhan. He was then told by the local police to stop fear-mongering on the issue. The report of his death has caused a massive uproar over the social media with anger and tributes pouring in over his unfortunate death.

The 34-year-old doctor was widely hailed as a hero after reports emerged of the local police targeting him alleging that he was spreading rumours about the virus when in fact he was trying to raise an alarm on the grave issue while the officials were downplaying the outbreak.

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The virus was diagnosed first in December in Wuhan which is known to be the epicentre of the virus and the capital of Hubei province in China. The deadly virus has so far killed 636 and over 31,000 infected cases reported in mainland China alone.

While no reliable treatment currently exists for the virus, a very skewed number of health organisations has had some positive results with a mixture of HIV and other antiviral medicines.

The outbreak took place in Wuhan in January and multiple countries have started evacuating their citizens from the country, and have decided to restrict the entry of foreigners returning from China. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Coronavirus as a 'global public health emergency'. 

Three people have been confirmed with Coronavirus in India, all three of them are from Kerala and are being kept in isolation for now. The Kerala state government on Sunday declared the virus as a 'state calamity' so that the authorities can take all the necessary steps to tackle the situation.

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(With ANI inputs)