The Coronavirus Whistle Blower: Dr. Aifin of Wuhan

Here’s a Google-translated interview with Dr. Aifin from Wuhan, the original whistle blower of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) which was published and got censored by the Chinese government. Chinese bloggers have been trying to keep up this interview. Check out the original interview in Chinese (https://www.notion.so/00a9beeb2fe54dfe84a55141a5f592cf…). We apologize in advance for using Google translate but we wanted to publish this most expediently.

On December 30, 2019, Affin received a virus test report for patients with unknown pneumonia. She circled the word “SARS coronavirus” in red. When asked by a college student, she took the report and circulated it. To this fellow student who is also a doctor. That night, the report spread to doctor circles in Wuhan, and those who forwarded the report included the eight doctors who were disciplined by the police.

This caused trouble for Affin. As the source of the transmission, she was interviewed by the hospital disciplinary committee and suffered “unprecedented and severe rebuke”, saying that she was making rumors as a professional.

According to some previous reports, Affin was called “another female doctor who has been instructed to surface,” and some people called her a “whistleblower”. It was the “whistler”.

This is the second report of “Person of Wuhan” March cover “Doctor Wuhan”.

** Text | ** Gong Jingqi ** Editing | ** Golden Stone

A text message from Affin, the director of the emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital, agreed to be interviewed at 5 am on March 1, and about half an hour later, at 5.32 am on March 1, her colleague and director of thyroid and breast surgery Jiang Xueqing was infected with New crown pneumonia died. Two days later, Mei Zhongming, deputy director of ophthalmology at the hospital, died. He and Li Wenliang were in the same department.

As of March 9, 2020, 4 medical staff in the Wuhan Central Hospital have died of new crown pneumonia infection. Since the outbreak, this hospital, just a few kilometers away from the South China Seafood Market, has become the hospital with the largest number of employees in Wuhan. One, according to media reports, more than 200 people in the hospital were infected, including three deputy deans and multiple functional department directors. Multiple department directors are currently maintained with ECMO.

The shadow of death hangs over this Wuhan’s largest tertiary hospital. A doctor told People in the large group of hospitals that almost no one spoke, but mourned and discussed in private.

Tragedy had a chance to avoid. On December 30, 2019, Affin received a virus test report for patients with unknown pneumonia. She circled the word “SARS coronavirus” in red. When asked by a college student, she took the report and circulated it. To this fellow student who is also a doctor. That night, the report spread to doctor circles in Wuhan, and those who forwarded the report included the eight doctors who were disciplined by the police.

This caused trouble for Affin. As the source of the transmission, she was interviewed by the hospital disciplinary committee and suffered “unprecedented and severe rebuke”, saying that she was making rumors as a professional.

In the afternoon of March 2nd, Affin received an interview with People in the Nanjing Road District of Wuhan Central Hospital. She was sitting alone in the emergency room office. The emergency department, which had admitted more than 1,500 patients a day, had returned to quiet. There was only one tramp lying in the emergency hall.

According to some previous reports, Affin was called “another female doctor who has been instructed to surface,” and some people called her a “whistleblower”. It was the “whistler”. During the interview, Affin mentioned the word “regret” several times. She regretted that she did not continue to whistle after being interviewed, especially for her colleague who passed away. “Everywhere, right?”

About Wuhan Central Hospital and Affin What have they experienced in the past two months? The following is what Affin tells–

Affin

** Unprecedented reprimand **

On December 16, last year, we received a patient from the Emergency Department of Nanjing Road Hospital. Inexplicably high fever, the medication has not been good, the body temperature does not move. On the 22nd, she transferred to the respiratory department, performed a bronchoscopy, took alveolar lavage fluid, and sent it out for high-throughput sequencing. Later, the coronavirus was reported orally. At that time, the colleague who had the tube bed chewed several times in my ear: Director Ai, that person reported the coronavirus. Later we learned that the patient was working in South China Seafood.

Immediately after December 27th, another patient came from the Nanjing Road Hospital. He was the nephew of a doctor in our department. He was in his 40s without any underlying diseases. His lungs were messed up and blood oxygen saturation was only 90%. The hospital has been treated for almost 10 days without any improvement, and the patient was hospitalized in the respiratory department. Fibrobronchoscope was also taken, and the alveolar lavage fluid was taken for testing.

At noon on the day of December 30th, my classmate at Tongji Hospital sent me a screenshot of a WeChat conversation, which said: “Don’t go to South China recently, there are many people with high fever …” He asked me if it was true Yes, at that time, I was watching a CT of a typical patient with pulmonary infection on the computer. I sent him a 11-second video of the CT and told him that this was a patient who came to our emergency department in the morning and was in South China. Seafood market.

Just after 4 pm that day, my colleague showed me a report that said: SARS coronavirus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 46 kinds of oral / respiratory colonization bacteria. I have read the report many times and the following note reads: SARS coronavirus is a single-stranded positive-strand RNA virus. The main mode of transmission of the virus is close-range droplet transmission or contact with respiratory secretions of patients, which can cause a special pneumonia that is obviously contagious and can affect multiple organ systems, also known as atypical pneumonia.

At the time, I was scared of cold sweat, which was a terrible thing. The patient was admitted to the respiratory department. It should reasonably be reported by the respiratory department, but for the sake of insurance and attention, I immediately called and reported it to the hospital’s public health department and the hospital’s sensory department. At that time, the director of the respiratory department of our hospital happened to pass by my door. He was a person who had participated in SARS. I caught him and said, “We have a patient who received your department and found this thing.” He said at a glance that it was troublesome. I knew it was troublesome.

After calling the hospital, I also circulated this report to my classmates. I purposely drew a red circle on the line “SARS coronavirus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 46 types of oral / respiratory colonization bacteria. It is to remind him to pay attention. I also sent the report to the doctors in the department to remind everyone to take precautions.

That thing was spread that night, and the screenshots of the transmission were the photos I painted in red circles, including the ones that I later learned that Li Wenliang passed on to the group. At that time, I was thinking that it might be bad. At 10:20, the hospital sent a message. It was a notice of transfer to the city health committee. The main point was that pneumonia of unknown cause should not be arbitrarily released to avoid causing panic among the people. If panic is caused by information leakage, accountability should be pursued.

I was very scared at the time and immediately passed this information to my classmates. About an hour later, the hospital sent another notice, again stressing that related news within the group cannot be circulated. One day later, at 11:46 pm on January 1st, the head of the hospital supervision department sent me a message to let me pass by the next morning.

I didn’t fall asleep that night, I was worried and thought over and over again, but I felt that there are always two sides to everything. Even if it caused adverse effects, it is not necessarily a bad thing to remind medical staff in Wuhan to take precautions. At 8 o’clock the next morning, before I finished the shift, I called to call in the past.

After the interview, I suffered an unprecedented and very severe rebuke.

At that time, the leader of the conversation said, “We can’t afford to raise our heads when we go out for a meeting. The director of XX criticizes our hospital. As the director of the emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital, you are a professional. Thing? “This is the original sentence. Let me go back to the 200-odd person in the department to convey them verbally one by one. We ca n’t send them by WeChat or SMS. We can only talk face-to-face or make phone calls. We are not allowed to say anything about this pneumonia. …

I was stunned all at once. He didn’t criticize you for not working hard, but it seemed that the good situation of Wuhan’s development was destroyed by me alone. I had a very desperate feeling at the time. I was a serious and hard-working person. I felt that everything I did was done according to the rules and made sense. What was wrong with me? I saw this report, and I also reported it to the hospital. My classmates, my colleagues, and my colleagues exchanged information about a certain patient. Without revealing any personal information of the patient, it is equivalent to discussing a medical case between medical students. As a clinical doctor, you already know that a very important virus has been found in a patient. When other doctors asked, how could you not say it? This is your instinct to be a doctor, right? What am I doing wrong? I have done what a doctor and a person should normally do. In the case of anyone, I think I will do it.

I was very emotional at the time, saying that I did this thing, and it had nothing to do with the rest of the people, you just arrest me and go to jail. I said that I am not suitable for continuing to work in this position and want to take a break. The leader did not agree, saying that this was the time to test me.

I went home that night, I remember quite clearly, and told my husband after entering the door, if something went wrong, you can bring the child up. Because my second treasure is still very young, I’m only over 1 year old. He felt inexplicable at the time. I didn’t tell him what he was being told. On January 20th, after Zhong Nanshan told people, I told him what happened that day. During that time, I just reminded my family not to go to crowded places and wear masks when going out.

** peripheral department **

Many people worry that I am also called to admonish one of those eight people. Actually, I was not admonished by the Public Security Bureau. Later, a good friend asked me, are you a whistleblower? I said I was not a whistleblower, I was the one who sent the whistle.

But that interview hit me a lot, very big. After I returned, I felt that my whole heart was broken. I really worked hard and worked hard. Then all the people asked me again, and I couldn’t answer.

All I can do is get the emergency department to focus on protection. We have more than 200 people in the emergency department. From January 1st, I asked everyone to strengthen their protection. All people must wear masks, hats, and fast-moving hands. I remember one day when there was a male nurse who did not wear a mask during the shift, I immediately scolded him on the spot “don’t come to work without a mask in the future.”

On January 9th, I saw a patient coughing at the pre-examination table when I was off work. From that day on, I asked them to wear a mask to the patient who came to see the patient, one for each person. Don’t save money at this time. No one passed on, and I want to emphasize here that wearing a mask to strengthen protection is contradictory.

That time was really depressing and very painful. Some doctors proposed to wear the outer clothing outside. The meeting in the hospital said they would not let it go, saying that wearing the outer clothing would cause panic. I asked the people in the department to wear an isolation gown inside a white coat. This was out of specification and ridiculous.

We watched more and more patients, and the radius of the spreading area became larger and larger. First, the South China Seafood Market may be related to it, and then it spread, the radius became larger and larger. Many of them are family-transmitted. Among the first seven people, there was a disease in which the mother gave the son food. The clinic boss got sick, and the patients who came for the injection were passed on to him. They were all too heavy. I knew there must be someone passing on. If there is no human-to-human transmission, the South China Seafood Market will be closed on January 1. How can there be more and more patients?

Many times I was thinking, if they did n’t rebuke me like that, ask the ins and outs of this matter calmly, and then ask other respiratory experts to communicate with them, maybe the situation will be better, I can at least communicate more in the hospital a bit. If everyone was so alert on January 1, there would not be so many tragedies.

On the afternoon of January 3, in the Nanjing Road Hospital, doctors of urology gathered to review the work history of the old director. Dr. Hu Weifeng, who is 43 years old, is now in the rescue. On the afternoon of January 8 On the 22nd floor, Director Jiang Xueqing also organized a rehabilitation party for patients with breast cancer in Wuhan. On the morning of January 11, the department reported to me that the nurse in the emergency department’s emergency room Hu Ziwei was infected. She should be the first infected nurse in the central hospital. I The first time I called the Chief of the Medical Department to report, then the hospital held an emergency meeting, and the meeting instructed to change the report of “two lung infections, viral pneumonia?” To “two lungs scattered infection”; at the end of January 16th At a weekly meeting, a deputy dean was still saying, “Everyone must have a little medical knowledge. Some senior doctors should not make themselves scary.” Another leader took office and continued, ” No one can pass it on, but it can be prevented, treated and controlled. “One day later, on January 17, Jiang Xueqing was hospitalized, and 10 days later he was intubated and taken to ECMO.

The cost of the central hospital is so large that it is related to the lack of transparency of our medical staff. If you look at the fallen people, the emergency department and the respiratory department are not so heavy, because we have a sense of protection, and we should quickly rest and treat as soon as we are sick. The most important ones are the peripheral departments, Li Wenliang is an ophthalmologist, and Jiang Xueqing is a nail specialist.

Jiang Xueqing is really a very good person with high medical skills. It is one of the two Chinese physician awards in the hospital. And we are still neighbors. We are a unit. I live on the 40th floor. He lives on the 30th floor. The relationship is very good. However, because I am too busy at work, I can only meet during meetings and hospital activities. He is a workaholic, either in the operating room or at the clinic. No one will go to tell him specifically, Director Jiang, you have to pay attention and wear a mask. He also didn’t have the time and energy to inquire about these things, and he must have taken care of it: “What’s the matter? It’s pneumonia.” This was what the people in their department told me.

If these doctors can get timely reminders, perhaps this day will not be. Therefore, as a client, I regret it. I knew that today, I would criticize him for not criticizing me. “Lao Tzu” said everywhere, right?

Although he was in the same hospital with Li Wenliang, I didn’t recognize him until his death, because the hospital had too many 4,000 people and was usually busy. The night before his death, the director of the ICU called me to borrow a cardiac press from the emergency department and said that Li Wenliang was going to be rescued. I was shocked at the news. I did not understand the whole process of Li Wenliang, but his condition was affected by him. Does it matter if you feel bad after being reprimanded? I’m going to put a question mark here, because I feel the training feels the same.

Later, when things got to this point, it proved that Li Wenliang was right. I can understand his mood very much. It may be the same as my mood. It is not excitement and happiness, but regret. Regret should continue to scream loudly at the beginning. When people asked us, they continued to say. Many, many times, I was wondering if it would be time back.

** Alive is good **

On the night before the city was closed on January 23, a friend from the relevant department called to ask me about the true situation of emergency patients in Wuhan. I said you represent private or public. He said I represent private. I will tell you the truth when I speak on my behalf. On January 21, our emergency department saw 1,523 patients, three times as often as usual, of which 655 had fever.

During that time, the situation of the emergency department will never be forgotten by people who have experienced it, and it will even subvert all your outlook on life.

If this is a war, the emergency department is at the forefront. However, the situation at the time was that the following wards were saturated, and basically none of the patients were accepted, and the ICU was resolutely refused to accept them, saying that there were clean patients in them, and they were polluted as soon as they entered. disease

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Author: Quentin Lee

Quentin Lee is an international filmmaker of mystery.

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