Forty health-care workers in a single hospital in Wuhan were infected with the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), in January, a study written by doctors at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Friday, has revealed.
Among these, a single patient infected as many as ten health-care workers. The new revelations throw light on the plight and difficulties of those at the front-lines, fighting the deadly coronavirus.
What did the new study reveal?
Among those forty workers, 31 worked on general wards, seven in the emergency department, and two in the ICU. Ten of the workers were infected by a single patient. This revelation goes against the earlier established fact that a single patient infects on average 2.2 others. This could be because some persons might be more susceptible to the virus, as compared to others.
Along with forty medicos, seventeen patients who were admitted for other ailments, also contracted the deadly disease, the study revealed.
Known cases of fatalities among doctors
On January 25, Liang Wudong, a doctor at Hubei Xinhua Hospital, died of coronavirus at the age of 62. He was at the front-lines of the battle against the deadly coronavirus in Wuhan, CGTN reported.
Li Wenliang, the whistleblower doctor who raised an early alarm over coronavirus and was later detained by police for 'rumour-mongering', died of coronavirus, on Friday. The fact that he tried to draw attention to the mysterious pneumonia cases early on, and if he wasn't censored, it could have saved many lives, has created widespread anger and mistrust for the Chinese government.
The news of Li's death became the top trending topic on Chinese social media, garnering an estimated 1.5 billion views. His wife is due to give birth in June. As on Saturday, the novel coronavirus has claimed 724 lives and infected about 35,000 persons in over two dozen countries.
