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A Chinese doctor was targeted by Beijing authorities after sounding the alarm about the new coronavirus during its early days — and now he’s hospitalized with the deadly illness, according to a report.

On Dec. 30, Dr. Li Wenliang, 34, posted on the WeChat app a chilling warning among his medical-school alumni that seven people from a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan were quarantined in his hospital with a SARS-like illness, according to CNN.

Evoking memories of the SARS epidemic that claimed hundreds of Chinese lives amid a government coverup in 2003, Li told CNN, “I only wanted to remind my university classmates to be careful.”

But within hours of posting what he’d intended to be a private alert, screenshots of his messages had gone viral.

“When I saw them circulating online, I realized that it was out of my control and I would probably be punished,” Li said from his Intensive Care Unit bed after he was diagnosed on Saturday.

On the day that Li messaged his friends, Wuhan health officials informed medical facilities in the epicenter city that several patients from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market had contracted an “unknown pneumonia.”

“Any organizations or individuals are not allowed to release treatment information to the public without authorization,” the city’s Health Commission warned.

The next day, Wuhan authorities publicly announced the outbreak and informed the World Health Organization.

Three days after that, Li was chided by police for “spreading rumors online” and “severely disrupting social order” — and forced to sign a statement admitting his “misdemeanor” and promising not to commit additional “unlawful acts,” CNN reported.

Then on Jan. 10, after unwittingly treating a patient infected with the deadly virus, Li began coming down with the symptoms himself.

Coughing, he developed a fever the next day and was hospitalized the day after that. His condition deteriorated so much that he was admitted to the intensive-care unit and given oxygen support. On Saturday, he tested positive for the virus but is recovering, CNN said.

China’s Supreme People’s Court eventually slammed Wuhan police for punishing “rumormongers.”

“It might have been a fortunate thing for containing the new coronavirus if the public had listened to this ‘rumor’ at the time,” the court said on Jan. 28.

The virus has now claimed at least 491 lives, almost all in China, and has infected more than 20,000 people across the globe.

David Hui Shu-Cheong, a professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, told the South China Morning Post this week that officials may be severely undercounting cases in Wuhan because they are only registering those admitted to a hospital.

Additional reporting by Jackie Salo