For one coronavirus patient at ground zero of the outbreak, the journey from infection to recovery was a nightmare scenario that entailed multiple hospital visits, symptoms so severe he thought he would die and quarantine under police watch.
Tiger Ye - not his real name - is a 21-year-old student in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the new, still little understood virus first emerged. Ye, who doesn’t want to be identified for fear of being ostracized, first suspected he’d caught the illness that’s spread around the world on Jan. 21, when he felt too weak to finish dinner. He checked his temperature, and it was up.
What followed was more than two weeks of anxiety and desperation as Ye tried to confirm if he had the pneumonia-causing virus and get treatment for his increasingly severe symptoms. He was one of the lucky ones, beating the sickness in part because his father -- a health care worker -- was aware of the risks earlier than most of Wuhan’s population.
China Under Siege
More than 3,000 people have died from the new coronavirus in China as a severe shortage of hospital beds, testing kits and other basic medical equipment mean many have to stand in line for hours to get diagnosed, and some die before even seeing a doctor.. China has quarantined vast swathes of Hubei, and the outbreak has caused parts of the world’s second-biggest economy to shut down as scientists across the world race to find a cure.
Diagnosis has emerged as one of the major stumbling blocks in getting the virus under control in Hubei, where the number of those who fear they are infected far outweighs the capacity of hospitals to confirm if they are. On Thursday, Hubei began counting patients who were diagnosed via CT imaging alongside those who tested positive with the nucleic acid kits, resulting in a more than 45% surge in the number of confirmed cases, to nearly 50,000 people.
Police Drills In China
A video of a mock drill by Chinese security officials to create awareness about public
cooperation with police during the Coronavirus epidemic was falsely being shared as a true incident.
In the viral video, one can spot a 'SWAT' team in Hazmat suits forcefully restraining a man as he refuses to cooperate with officials when his car is stopped. The man begins to drive away when he is stopped by a police van and surrounded by men carrying riot shields and wearing uniforms with the word 'SWAT' written, and as he gets out of his car, a net is thrown over his head and he is grabbed by officials.
OMG: China needs #coronavirus SWAT (special weapons and tactics) police team to arrest this drop dead virus victims. https://t.co/A5OTtK8J3W
— Solomon Yue (@SolomonYue) February 23, 2020
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