Dubai – Masaader News
“I hope this outbreak or this event may be over in something like April,” Zhong Nanshan, an 83-year-old epidemiologist who won fame for combating the SARS epidemic in 2003 said in a hospital run by Guangzhou Medical University, according to Reuters.
Zhong was optimistic the new outbreak would soon slow, with the number of new cases already declining in some places.
He said there was a gradual reduction in new cases in the southern province of Guangdong where he is based, and also in Zhejiang and elsewhere. “So that’s good news for us.”
With China taking unprecedented measures to seal infected regions and limit transmission routes, Zhong applauded the government for locking down Wuhan, the city at the epicentre which he said lost control of the virus at an early stage.
“The local government, local healthcare authority should have some responsibility on this,” he said.
“The majority of the people think he’s the hero of China,” Zhong said, shed tears about the doctor Li Wenliang who died last week after being reprimanded for raising the alarm. “I’m so proud of him, he told people the truth, at the end of December, and then he passed away.”
Behind him stood hundreds of other doctors all wanting to tell the truth and now being encouraged by the government to do so, he said. “We really need to listen,” he said.