29-year-old doctor, infected with coronavirus, died in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the epidemic, making him one of the youngest known patients who died of the disease and increases the human toll among nursing staff.
Peng Yinhua died Thursday after being infected with the coronavirus while working at the No. 1 People's Hospital in the Jiangxia district of Wuhan, the state agency new China reported on Friday (February 21st). Dr. Peng had planned to get married during the Lunar New Year holidays in late January, but had to postpone the wedding to devote himself to the patients of the viral pneumonia epidemic.
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Poignant detail: "He never had the opportunity to send the invitation cards for his wedding, which remained in the drawers of his office," says the agency. At least eight medical personnel have died in China after being infected with the virus.
Covid-19 disease has killed more than 2,200 people and affected more than 75,000 people in China, but health officials have not specified the age of the deceased in recent weeks. At the beginning of February, the death of doctor Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist from Wuhan, had caused a surge of emotion and anger in the country, the doctor being considered a martyr of the epidemic.
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Mr. Li had in fact been reprimanded by the police after giving an alert at the end of December about the spread of the new virus, before contracting it himself a few days later. Liu Zhiming, director of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, died on Tuesday morning. According to Chinese authorities, more than 1,700 medical personnel have been infected in the country, mainly in Hubei province, the most affected by the epidemic and of which Wuhan is the capital. Doctors and nurses face severe shortages of masks and protective equipment in hospital structures overwhelmed by the influx of patients, several of them told AFP. Some continue their work even after developing respiratory disorders, the main symptom of the disease.
