Doctor Treating Patients At Wuhan Hospital Dies After Contracting Coronavirus

A doctor working at a hospital in Wuhan, China, has died after contracting coronavirus.

The China Global Television Network shared the news in a tweet and said the doctor who had died was 62-year-old Liang Wudong.

The overall death toll has risen to 41 after another 15 deaths in Hubei Province - where the outbreak began - were announced on Saturday.

Health officials are struggling to contain the virus and there are now more than 1,200 confirmed cases in China. The virus has also spread to Europe, with three confirmed cases in France. Australia has also confirmed several cases.

According to the Guardian, 14 people in the UK have been tested for coronavirus, but all the tests have come back negative.

PA

The virus - which was previously unknown to science - has been noted for to its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed 774 people back in 2002-2003.

Symptoms seem to begin with a fever, followed by a cough and shortness of breath; there is no vaccine or cure.

Wuhan has been on lockdown since Wednesday and a new 1,000 bed hospital is being hastily built in the city, with local news outlets reporting that it could be in use as early as 3 February.

It is suspected that animals, such as fruit bats or snakes, could be the primary source of the outbreak, with a seafood market selling live animals in Wuhan in Hubei province being identified as ground zero for the virus.

The World Health Organisation reported that The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan city was closed on 1 January 2020 for environmental sanitation and disinfection.

Gao Fu, director of the Chinese centre for disease control and prevention, explained in a report published by Rappler: "We already know that the disease originated from a market which conducted illegal transaction of wild animals.

"This might be the cause, so the disease could be on an animal, and then passed on from this animal to a human."

Topics: World News, China

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey