Wuhan coronavirus: Is China hiding the virus's real impact as videos of people collapsing on streets emerge?
The coronavirus outbreak in China has seen the official death toll rose to 41. A Guardian live update report read that more than 1,200 were infected and 13 cities were in lockdown.
In the meantime, there have been videos starting to appear on Chinese social media sites with uploaders claiming these clips were filmed in Wuhan.
According to Metro, there are clips of people (videos were still unverified by the site) collapsing on the ground, pavements and hospitals that are widely being circulated even on western social media sites.
The clips are disturbing as some of them show people collapsing face first. Some of these disturbing videos on Weibo have been removed.
The site also said a video was reposted on Twitter by journalist Ezra Cheung with a tweet that read: "The lady in the clip says dead bodies were left at hospital aisles untreated whereas doctors are taking care of other patients alongside them."
The clip shows a woman filming as she walks along with the hospital where patients are shown wearing masks while medics are tending to them dressed in hazmat suits. There was also a visual of what appeared to be bodies on the beds and were covered with white sheets.
On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of a problem brewing in Wuhan — the people of the city were showing pneumonia-like symptoms and the culprit seemed to be a mysterious virus.
As the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak escalates, the only lab in China which is equipped to study and deal with such deadly and emerging infectious diseases is located in Wuhan — the city where the virus first appeared.
According to the BBC, many events have been cancelled and a new hospital is being built in the city of Wuhan to deal with the crisis.
The project will "solve the shortage of existing medical resources" and would be "built fast [and] not cost much... because it will be prefabricated buildings", the Changjiang Daily said.
Metro's report added that scientists believed the virus mutated from animals and infected humans at a seafood market in Wuhan in December. There have been confirmed cases in Japan, the United States, Thailand and South Korea.
According to a New York Times report, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention announced on Friday that a second case of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the US — a woman in her 60s in Chicago who had recently traveled to Wuhan, China, the center of the outbreak.
The other case, a man in his 30s, was in Washington State. As of Friday, January 24, the woman was still hospitalized but was doing better. Officials declined to name the hospital.