CGTN

Remembering the medical professionals we've lost to coronavirus

BEIJING, April 4, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The unknown, relentless novel coronavirus has so far deprived thousands of people of their beloved family members in China. Parting ways doesn't mean parting forever. CGTN explores in detail the lives of those who have died from the coronavirus since the outbreak began.

Youtube：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoRj_StxMms

To learn more about these doctors and other victims of the novel coronavirus in China, visit CGTN's interactive memorial page.

Liu Yang never thought this meeting with her father, even though it was from afar, would be their last. Her father Liu Zhiming, a prominent neurologist, died on February 18 after being infected by the novel coronavirus.

Liu was director of Wuhan Wuchang Hospital, which was designated by the Wuhan municipal government on January 21 as one of the hospitals to treat patients infected with the novel coronavirus or suspected of having the virus. "He called me, asking me to prepare some clothes for him. He said he was too busy to go home. At the time, I felt that he was short of breath," said his wife Cai Liping, an ICU head nurse at Wuhan Third Hospital.

A workaholic, he was on shift for three days straight in converting a part of the hospital into isolation wards that began receiving infected patients on January 23. That was the day when Wuhan was put on lockdown, and also the day Liu was diagnosed with COVID-19.

He was hospitalized the next day and soon attached to a ventilator, talking only on the phone with Cai, who was on a hectic schedule in treating severe COVID-19 cases. In his last days, he rejected intubation, according to Hong Yi, secretary of Wuchang Hospital's discipline committee. "He was worried that his team would be infected."

On the day he passed away, there were 431 COVID-19 patients in his hospital. He's the first known hospital director to have died from the coronavirus.

Aside from senior medical professionals on the frontline of the battle against COVID-19, there are young doctors at the beginning of their careers such as Xia Sisi, a gastroenterologist at Wuhan's Union Jiangbei Hospital. She died from the infection in late February. Colleagues said she could have been infected in January, when she tended to an elderly patient who had presented symptoms of the novel coronavirus.