On 30 December 2019, Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, received a diagnostic report describing suspected SARS coronavirus and respiratory infections. She circulated an image of the report to medical contacts after reporting it internally; ophthalmologist Li Wenliang then warned former classmates through WeChat. Ai later said that hospital officials accused her of spreading rumors and subjected her to an “unprecedented and very severe rebuke.” The source also reports that, at a 16 January 2020 hospital meeting, officials continued denying human-to-human transmission, while infected nurse Hu Ziwei’s medical description was changed from “viral pulmonary infection?” to “spread-out pulmonary infection.”
People magazine published Ai’s first-person account, “The Whistle-Blower,” on 10 March 2020, but the article and its WeChat post were removed within hours. Chinese users reposted it through emojis, Morse code, braille, pinyin, and other formats to evade censorship. Claims that Ai was formally threatened on 2 January were attributed to later reporting and her account; Wuhan Central Hospital party chief Cai Li was later fired, although the supplied source does not establish that the firing was solely for this incident. The episode became a prominent example of how institutional reprimands and online censorship obstructed early public discussion of a dangerous outbreak.
