Behind the Global Race to Contain China’s Killer Bug
“What we are facing now is an extreme, severe and abrupt public health crisis.”
Medical staff members wearing protective clothing arrive with a patient at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan on Jan. 25.
Photographer: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
In early January, doctors in Wuhan, a transportation and tech hub in central China, worked frantically to save the life of a 61-year-old man infected with a new and unknown virus. He checked in with severe pneumonia, on top of his preexisting issues with abdominal tumors and chronic liver disease. Infection-fighting medicines didn’t work. His blood was pumped through an artificial lung, then he went into septic shock and his vital organs shut down. He slipped away on Jan. 9.
This was no ordinary death. His passing was publicly flagged in an official statement posted by Wuhan’s city government and marked the first known fatality from a viral outbreak that has alarmed infectious disease experts worldwide since news of the illness surfaced in late December.