Filenews 27 January 2021
A doctor from the city of Wuhan, the "ground zero" of the coronavirus pandemic, describes how he and colleagues had suspected the high contagiousness of the virus since early last January, weeks before Chinese authorities admitted it, but were not allowed to notify anyone.
The doctor's testimony in a new BBC documentary about the first 54 days, from the first known case to the day Wuhan was quarantined, gathers even more evidence that Beijing initially attempted to cover up the pandemic and terrorize health workers to remain silent.
Wuhan's main hospital is located a few kilometres from the open market, the epicentre of the pandemic, according to the prevailing version, which wants the new coronavirus to be transmitted to humans by an animal.
More than 200 hospital workers caught the virus and several, including Lee Wenlyang, who spoke openly about the Chinese government's failures, died. In the same documentary, a doctor states that those responsible forced them to lie about the transmission of the coronavirus.
They were banned from talking about the coronavirus and wearing masks.
The intubation department had been full since 10 January, according to the doctor speaking in the BBC documentary, who is not named. "It was out of control, we started to panic," he said.
However, hospital management banned doctors from talking to anyone about the condition and did not even allow them to wear masks. "We all knew it was transmitted from person to person, even a naïve person would understand it. Then why don't we talk about it? That made us angry and confused us," says the doctor.
The doctor claims that within weeks tens of thousands of suspected cases occurred, but they did not have the means to confirm or report the incidents within the hospital. In contrast, only 41 cases had been reported by that time.
Chaos and lack of prevention in the early days in Wuhan
An image of chaos, with the health authorities of Hubei and Wuhan province unable to put the cases of coronavirus in order in the first months of the epidemic, was revealed 15 days ago and a major CNN journalistic investigation, the famous Wuhan Files.
The US network's disclosure shows arrhythmias in the functioning of the health system, inaccuracies in the numbers reported by China as confirmed cases of coronavirus, and a lack of coordination behind closed doors within health services. All this in the first months of the evolution of the pandemic, when the epicentre was the town of Wuhan, in Hubei province.
The Chinese authorities initially underestimated the extent of the epidemic
The Chinese authorities appear to have underestimated the effect of the pandemic at the time. According to china's first protocols for treating coronavirus in January, doctors had to list as a "suspicious" case a patient who came into contact with a confirmed case and showed symptoms of fever and pneumonia.
The patient was listed as a clinically diagnosed case if the symptoms were confirmed by x-ray or CT scan. Also, a case was registered as confirmed if his PCR test tested positive.
Experts contacted by CNN to confirm the authenticity of the 117-page documents, as well as any failures, argue that the way the data was recorded allowed authorities to present the epidemiological picture as they wished. However, the report notes that the Chinese authorities have improved the way cases are recorded by placing clinically diagnosed and confirmed patients in the same category.
Source: iefimerida.gr
