Thousands in China honor doctor who first warned of coronavirus and then died

SARAJevo, (Patria) - On the anniversary of the death from COVID-19 in February 2020 of doctor Li Wenliang, one of the first to warn of the danger of the new coronavirus in Wuhan, thousands of Chinese people paid tribute to him today via social media.

Li, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan's central hospital, shared his concerns about the spread of a new SARS-like coronavirus with colleagues via social media in December 2019, after which he was summoned by the police and accused of spreading "rumors".

His death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, after contracting it from a patient, triggered a wave of grief and anger in China. Internet users criticized the Chinese authorities and their crisis management, accusing them of concealing facts.

Li's personal page on the social network Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, remains one of the few places where users are reminded of the trauma at the beginning of the epidemic when millions of residents of Wuhan and Hubei province were confined to their homes under police surveillance.

Thousands of messages arrived today on the occasion of the first anniversary of the young doctor's death.

"I thought the whole world would forget you a year later," one user wrote to him, adding that he was wrong and that Li would live forever in the hearts of the Chinese people.

However, there was no sign of any commemoration in front of the hospital in the center of Wuhan where residents a year ago left flowers and pictures in memory of Li.

In Wuhan, a delegation of World Health Organization experts is investigating the origin of the pandemic. They visited the Hunan seafood market where the first cases of COVID-19 were identified. They also visited the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is at the center of conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus.