A woman claiming to be from Wuhan, China, lowered her face mask and coughed at police during an early morning protest action outside the Tin Shui Shopping Centre in Hong Kong on February 5, according to reports.

HKPUSU Campus Radio reported that the police had “earlier intentions to spray the woman with pepper spray.” Their video shows the woman confronting the police in Mandarin, saying: “What law have I broken? Am I a criminal? I hope you get the Wuhan coronavirus! I’m from Wuhan!”

The woman then lowered her face mask and deliberately coughed in the direction of the police.

News reports said the woman later admitted that she emigrated from Wuhan “a decade ago.”

Earlier on Tuesday a group calling themselves the Tin Shui Wai Connection set up a “health screening center” to check passengers arriving to Tin Shui Wai from Shenzhen Bay Port.

Wu Jianwei, a local councillor, told inmediahk that he hoped the action would “wake up the community” to implement “self-help” to combat what he described as deficiencies in the Hong Kong government’s approach to dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.

At the time of writing, 427 people had reportedly died from the new coronavirus, and there were more than 20,000 confirmed cases of the illness. Credit: HKPUSU Campus Radio via Storyful