Ai Fen says in interview, which censors are trying to erase, how superiors reprimanded her for warning about outbreak

A doctor in Wuhan has spoken out after seeing several of her colleagues die from the coronavirus, criticising hospital authorities for suppressing early warnings of the outbreak in an interview censors have been trying to erase from the internet.

In an interview with the Chinese magazine, Renwu, or People, Ai Fen, director of the emergency at Wuhan Central hospital, said she was reprimanded after alerting her superiors and colleagues of a Sars-like virus seen in patients in December.

Now that the virus has claimed more than 3,000 lives inside China, including four doctors at her hospital, one of which was the whistleblower ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, Ai has joined other critics risking their jobs, as well as detention, to speak out about conditions in Wuhan.

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“If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand. I would have fucking talked about it to whoever, where ever I could,” she said in the interview.

Since Tuesday, Ai’s interview has been posted and quickly deleted from Chinese social media sites. Renwu has removed the article and Ai could not be reached over the phone. Internet users have moved quickly to save the article, posting screenshots of it.

Tony Lin (@tony_zy) For those who’re already applauding China’s COVID-19 responses, CN is still heavily censoring info. A magazine’s feature on a whistleblower is being taken down from the entire CN internet. Ppl have to turn article into EMOJI to avoid censorship. Chinese readers can u decode it? pic.twitter.com/4p4vgXJ3I5

New versions of the article, in attempts to evade censors, have proliferated, from one partly written in emojis to another done in morse code, as well as pinyin, the romanisation system for Mandarin.

On 30 December, after seeing several patients with flu-like symptoms and resistant to usual treatment methods, Ai received the lab results of one case, which contained the word: “Sars coronavirus.” Ai, reading the report several times, says she broke out into a cold sweat.

She circled the words Sars, took a photo and sent it to a former medical school classmate, now a doctor at another hospital in Wuhan. By that evening, the photo had spread throughout medical circles in Wuhan, where it was also shared by Li Wenliang, becoming the first piece of evidence of the outbreak.

That night Ai said she received a message from her hospital saying information about this mysterious disease should not be arbitrarily released in order to avoid causing panic. Two days later, she told the magazine, she was summoned by the head of the hospital’s disciplinary inspection committee and reprimanded for “spreading rumours” and “harming stability”.

The staff were forbidden from passing messages or images related to the virus, she said. All Ai could do was ask her staff to wear protective clothing and masks – even as hospital authorities told them not to. She told her department to wear protective jackets under their doctor coats.

“We watched more and more patients come in as the radius of the spread of infection became larger,” she said, as they began to see patients with no connection to the seafood market, believed to be the source of the first cases.

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Meanwhile, Chinese officials were still insisting there was no reason to believe the virus was being passed between people. “I knew there must be human to human transmission,” Ai said.

On 21 January, the day after Chinese officials finally confirmed there was human to human transmission of the virus, the number of sick residents coming to the emergency room had already reached 1,523 in a day – three times the normal volume.

In the interview, Ai described moments that she will never forget: an elderly man staring blankly at a doctor giving him the death certificate of his 32-year-old son, or a father who was too sick to get out of the car outside of the hospital. By the time she walked to the car, he had died.

Q&A How can I protect myself and others from the coronavirus outbreak? Show Hide The World Health Organization is recommending that people take simple precautions to reduce exposure to and transmission of the coronavirus, for which there is no specific cure or vaccine. The UN agency advises people to: Frequently wash their hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or warm water and soap

Cover their mouth and nose with a flexed elbow or tissue when sneezing or coughing

Avoid close contact with anyone who has a fever or cough

Seek early medical help if they have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, and share their travel history with healthcare providers

Advice about face masks varies. Wearing them while out and about may offer some protection against both spreading and catching the virus via coughs and sneezes, but it is not a cast-iron guarantee of protection Many countries are now enforcing or recommending curfews or lockdowns. Check with your local authorities for up-to-date information about the situation in your area. In the UK, NHS advice is that anyone with symptoms should stay at home for at least 7 days. If you live with other people, they should stay at home for at least 14 days, to avoid spreading the infection outside the home.

Once, when she arranged for the transfer of a man’s mother-in-law to in-patient care, the man took a moment to thank Ai. The mother-in-law died upon arrival. “I know it was only a few seconds but that ‘thank you’ weighs heavily on me. In the time it took to say this one sentence, could a life have been saved?”

Over the last two months, Ai said she has also seen many of her colleagues fall sick and four die from the virus. One of those was Li Wenliang, whose death prompted an unprecedented wave of national anger and mourning.

Early on during the outbreak, public security officials in Wuhan said eight people had been punished for “spreading rumours”. It is not clear if Li was one of those and Ai said her reprimand came from her hospital. Still, several friends have asked Ai if she was one of those whistleblowers.

“I am not a whistleblower,” Ai told Renwu. “I am the one who provided the whistle.”