WaybackWire

SINGAPORE, Saturday 29 February.—Singapore raised its Dorscon disease alert from Yellow to Orange on 7 February, after cases appeared with no link to earlier patients or to travel in mainland China.

Organisers were advised to cancel or defer large non-essential events, and schools suspended inter-school activities. That evening supermarket queues stretched and shelves emptied. “The bulk-buying just creates more panic,” said Calvin Tan, a 35-year-old sales and marketing manager.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong went on television the next day. “So there is no need to panic. We are not locking down the city or confining everybody to stay at home,” he said. “But fear can do more harm than the virus itself.”

On 18 February Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat’s Budget set aside a $6.4 billion package to fight the coronavirus and projected a $10.9 billion deficit, the highest in a decade.

Clusters have grown around two churches and a software firm, and by today the Ministry of Health had numbered its cases up to 102. Seventy-two patients have recovered and gone home.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Saturday 29 February.—All three people who tested positive for the coronavirus in India, students back from Wuhan, have been cured, Kerala’s Health Minister K K Shailaja said today. The state had declared the virus a calamity after the third case.

“The three students who were found to be corona-positive were isolated, now they are stable. They have been cured,” she said.

“In my 25 days in isolation, there were times when I would feel depressed,” said the first of the three, a 20-year-old medical student from Thrissur who is now back home.

India brought 647 of its citizens and seven Maldivians out of Wuhan on two Air India flights in a 96-hour operation. This week an Indian Air Force plane flew medical supplies to Wuhan and brought back 112 people, 76 of them Indian.

An Air India flight also brought home 124 people from the quarantined Diamond Princess in Japan, 119 of them Indian citizens. The Health Ministry now advises against all non-essential travel to Singapore, South Korea, Iran and Italy.

WUHAN, Friday 7 February.—Dr Li Wenliang, the Wuhan ophthalmologist who was reprimanded by police for warning colleagues about the new virus, has died of it. He was 34.

“He died at 2:58 am on Feb 7 after attempts to resuscitate were unsuccessful,” Wuhan Central Hospital said.

On 30 December Dr Li warned a WeChat group of medical school alumni about seven patients from a seafood market in isolation at his hospital. On 3 January police reprimanded him for spreading rumours online.

“I think there should be more than one voice in a healthy society, and I don’t approve of using public power for excessive interference,” he told Caixin from his isolation ward.

His death set off grief and anger on Weibo. “Those who tell the truth are arrested for spreading rumours and those who tell nothing but lies become the leaders,” one user wrote.