WUHAN, China — A doctor who was among the first to warn about the coronavirus outbreak, only to be silenced by the police, was clinging to life on Friday after himself becoming infected with the virus, the hospital treating him reported.
The Wuhan City Central Hospital said in a post about 12:45 a.m. Friday on the Chinese social media site Weibo that it was still trying to save the doctor, Li Wenliang. But his condition, it said, was critical.
Some Chinese news reports said, without clear sourcing, that Dr. Li, 34, was already dead. The World Health Organization issued a message of condolence on Twitter, but also did not specify the source of its information.
The New York Times wrote about the doctor on Feb. 1, documenting his efforts to alert colleagues about an alarming cluster of illnesses that resembled Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, an earlier coronavirus that ravaged China nearly two decades ago. The article also reported Dr. Li’s middle-of-the-night summons by unhappy health officials.
“If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” Dr. Li told The Times. “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”
Dr. Li’s fate is a singularly delicate issue for the Chinese government. Even as officials battle the epidemic, they have tried to stifle widespread criticism that they mismanaged their response to the initial outbreak in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China’s Hubei Province.
The reports of Dr. Li’s death set off an outpouring of messages on the Chinese internet that lionized him as a hero who stood up to officials trying to play down a medical threat that came to engulf Wuhan, spill across China and ignite an international health crisis.
After the hospital clarified that Dr. Li was in fact still alive, people began posting comments of support. The doctor has one child, and he and his wife are expecting a second in the summer.
“Not sleeping!!! Waiting online for a miracle,” said one comment under the hospital’s statement on Weibo. “We don’t need to sleep tonight, but Li Wenliang must rise.”
In recent days, China has stepped up censorship after a rush of online criticism and investigative reports by emboldened Chinese journalists exposing the missteps that led the government to underestimate the threat of the coronavirus.
Jiemian, a Chinese news website, was among those that reported Dr. Li’s death, citing the doctor’s classmates. After falling ill from the coronavirus infection, the report said, Dr. Li took a turn for the better — but then relapsed. Global Times, another Chinese news service, also reported his death.
Some of the reports have since been taken down.
In early January, Dr. Li was questioned by hospital officials and the police after he warned a circle of medical school classmates on Dec. 30 about a viral outbreak that he said appeared similar to SARS. The police compelled him to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.
Dr. Li was soon vindicated as more and more Wuhan residents fell ill with fever and pneumonia symptoms. They eventually grew to over 10,000 — and Dr. Li was among their number. He had pneumonia.
An ophthalmologist, Dr. Li he had contracted the virus from one of his patients.
“I think a healthy society should not have just one voice,” he recently told Caixin, a Chinese magazine that has reported aggressively on the epidemic.
In recent interviews, Dr. Li sounded hopeful about overcoming the illness and going back to work.
“After I recover, I still want to return to the front line,” he told The Southern Metropolis Daily, a Chinese newspaper. “The epidemic is still spreading, and I don’t want to be a deserter.”
Elsie Chen contributed research from Wuhan. Li Yuan and Cao Li contributed reporting from Hong Kong. Claire Fu, Wang Yiwei and Amber Wang contributed research from Beijing.
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