Companion director Liu Zhiming took part in the battle against Covid-19, unfortunately he was infected and died at 10.54 this morning, despite great efforts to save him. Dr. Liu of Wuhan's Wuchang Hospital was only 51 years old and fell after making an important contribution to the work of contrasting and controlling the epidemic.
The Hubei Health Commission this morning announced with a communiqué in military tones, the death of the medical director. There are more than 1,800 coronavirus deaths in China, health statistics catalog them by place of residence, age, gender, diseases pre-existing at Covid-19. Beijing has been saying for weeks that there is a war going on to stop the epidemic. And in war the fallen hardly ever have a name. Only heroes leave the list.
Liu Zhiming was a hero, treated from Chinese narrative as a general killed on the front lines by an invisible enemy. Dr. Liu from Wuchang is the first medical director killed by the coronavirus. Rest in peace, the People's Daily had already written to your web account yesterday afternoon. Then the news had been withdrawn, from the hospital they had specified that the manager was still fighting for his life.
The same uncertainty that enveloped the end of Dr. Li Wenliang, the ophthalmologist who had tried to raise the alarm about the epidemic and had been censored. It is difficult to say why the fog has also risen for hours on the fate of Liu Zhiming. It is probably due to the low custom of the Chinese press with the continuous jet news: the information and its times in China are usually strictly controlled by censorship.
In Wuhan there are at least 40 hospitals, with over 60 thousand hospitalized, communication errors are difficult to avoid. And it is also likely that political authorities will feel guilty for the price paid by doctors and nurses, who in the first weeks of the epidemic had not been informed of the danger and continued to visit patients without taking all the necessary precautions to avoid contagion. . Even now that the epidemic has become a global crisis and China is facing it with a general mobilization, there is no ammunition to fight: insulating masks and coveralls are consumed at a frantic pace and the national industry is struggling to replace them. Those who are in the front line in the lane consciously risk their lives.
The Central Health Commission in recent days had announced that the health personnel suffered 1,716 infections and 7 deaths. The number went up to 3,019. The Ministry of Veterans (war) proposes to declare health workers who fell on duty against Covid-19 martyrs. We must honor them and give their families the same preferential treatment as those who give life in war.