Shocking footage shows hospital in China flooded with hundreds of patients amid deadly coronavirus outbreak as leading expert warns the situation 'is already uncontrollable'
Shocking footage has purported to show hundreds of people filling a Chinese hospital to the brim amid an outbreak of a deadly new virus.
The coronavirus epidemic, which has killed 25 people and sickened more than 800, has led the authorities to quarantine at least 24 million people living in nine cities in China's Hubei Province before the Lunar New Year's Day on Saturday.
A leading Chinese virologist who helped tackle the SARS epidemic in Asia in 2003 has warned that the situation in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, 'is already uncontrollable'.
Another expert in the country feared that the worst was yet to come, claiming that the peak of the outbreak would be next month.
Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province with a population of 11million, has been quarantined since yesterday.
The local government today said that the city was witnessing a surge in the number of its fever patients and that hospitals were running out of beds.
Authorities have reportedly ordered a state-run construction company to build a dedicated hospital in six days to treat patients diagnosed with coronavirus.
The emergency medical facility would be modelled on a centre built in Beijing in 2003 during the epidemic of SARS, the report said.
Unverified footage posted by a blogger on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter, appears to show the corridor and lobby of a hospital crammed with hundreds of mask-donning patients waiting to see the doctor.
Yang Gonghuan, the former deputy director of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, today told the press that the peak of the outbreak was yet to come.
Ms Yang predicted that the health crisis would worsen and the number of patients would spike in February.
The expert, who helped fought the SARS epidemic in 2003, made the comments to Chinese news outlet Jiemian, which is affiliated to the official Shanghai United Media Group.
Dr Guan Yi, whose team was among the first to identify the SARS virus 17 years ago, shared the concerns.
He confessed to Chinese media that the situation in Wuhan - where the virus originated - 'is already uncontrollable'.
He feared that the new virus could lead to an outbreak at least 10 times worse than the SARS pandemic, which killed 775 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide.
'I have experienced so much and never felt scared. Most [viruses] are controllable, but this time I am scared,' Dr Guan told Chinese outlet Caixin.
The expert, who was in Wuhan this week, claimed he had to 'escape' from the city yesterday after noticing the 'jaw-droppingly' lack of preventative measures enforced by the local authorities.
At least nine cities in Hubei, with a combined population of 24 million, are now in lockdown. They include Wuhan, Huanggang, Ezhou, Zhijiang, Dangyang, Qianjiang, Chibi, Xiantao, Lichuan.
The number of cities is expected to rise.
The provincial market watchdog today acknowledged that the city was facing shortage of vegetables and the phenomenon was caused by panic buying.
Chen Zhuan, a representative from the Hubei Provincial Market Management Bureau, demanded all farmers' markets and supermarkets conduct price checks on their products and keep the food prices at a 'stable' level.
China's central government has also issued the province one billion yuan (£110million) as an emergency relief fund to help the local authorities tackle the alarming health crisis.
The province has also ordered all travel companies to halt its business and cancel all tour groups.
The World Health Organization is facing increasing pressure to declare the crisis a public health emergency, like it has done for Ebola and Zika in the past. Health chiefs will meet again later today to make a final verdict.
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Strife In a Teacup
that Sisolak has declared a state of emergency in Nevada, we're also having Flash Flooding now in Vegas too.
