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“Coronavirus outbreak toll in Wuhan kept low by rigid infection definition”: Doctor
Doctors in Wuhan used three parameters to define who was infected by coronavirus.
Stringent medical standards had to be met before a patient was classified as a coronavirus victim, keeping the infection toll artificially low in the first days of the outbreak in worst-hit Wuhan, local Chinese media has reported.
Once senior health officials were persuaded to loosen the stringent parameters in the third week of January, the outbreak numbers shot through the roof in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, a frontline doctor working in the city has revealed to Caixin, a Beijing-based multimedia group.
“You had to have had exposure to the south China seafood market (where the virus is said to have jumped from animal to human), you needed to have had a fever and test positive for the virus. You had to meet all three criteria in order to be diagnosed. The third one was especially stringent. In reality, very few people were able to test for a virus,” Peng Zhiyong, a top doctor at the Wuhan University South Central Hospital, told Caixin.
It meant that for a good week in the middle of January Wuhan health authorities reported only 41 cases and one death because of the virus.
In reality, the previously unknown virus had rapidly spread through human-to-human transmission across the city, then the province and rest of China and then beyond China’s borders – to Thailand by January 17.
The first case in South Korea, for example, was detected on January 20 in a woman who had travelled to Seoul from Wuhan with high fever a day before.
“On January 18, the high-level specialists from the (central) National Health Commission came to Wuhan, to the south Central Hospital to inspect. I told them again that the criteria were too high. This way it was easy to miss infections. I told them this was infectious; if you made the criteria too high and let patients go, you’re putting society in danger. After the second national team of specialists came, the criteria were changed. The number of diagnosed patients rose quickly,” Peng told Caixin in a detailed and candid interview.
Peng described the working hours at the hospital, and how he and his colleagues have to work for hours without a break.
“The work in the ICU is overloaded. There are three patient wards with 66 beds in South Central Hospital, housing 150 patients. Since January 7 when we received the first patient, no one took any leave. We took turns to work in the ICU. Even pregnant medical staff did not take leave. After the epidemic got worse, none of the medical staff ever went home. We rest in a hotel near the hospital or in the hospital,” Peng added.
Working while wearing protective gear isn’t easy, Peng said, adding there is no eating or going to the bathroom during the shift.
“In the segregated ward, we wear level-3 protective gear. One shift is 12 hours for a doctor and eight hours for a nurse. Since protective gear is in a shortage, there is only one set for a medical staff member a day. We refrain from eating or drinking during our shift because the gear is no longer protective once we go to the washroom. The gear is thick, airtight and tough on our body. It felt uncomfortable at the beginning, but we are used to it now.”
On Thursday, the Chinese foreign ministry denied that the number of the infected and dead in the outbreak were low, saying rumours and lies were being spread about the epidemic.
