Joshua Wong 黃之鋒  😷Verified account

4/ In 2003, the outbreak of SARS was traced to the selling of wild animal, like snakes, civet cats and bats in wet markets in China’s Southern Guangdong province, and the first patient was infected after preparing for a meal of chicken, cat and snake, and later infected others.

5/ During the initial stages of the outbreak, the Chinese government concealed information from the public, limiting mitigation efforts and exacerbating the spread of SARS. Chinese government did not notified WHO of SARS until Feb 2003, allowing it to flourish and spread to HK.

6/ It infected 1,755 people and took away 299 lives. I was just a kid at the time, I remember school was cancelled and I was staring at the news everyday for updates on infection and death numbers, I can still recall how desperate we were.

7/ Similar to SARS, the Huanan Seafood Market, which sells meat is sold alongside live animals like dogs, hares, and civets, in Wuhan is thought to be the starting point for the virus outbreak.

8/ A week earlier, Chinese government claimed the outbreak of Wuhan-virus was “preventable and controllable” and this week it was forced to admit that virus was able to spread person-to-person and there are cases of infection were reported by people who never set foot in Wuhan.

9/ However, Chinese were being arrested by authorities and were accused of spreading rumours about the Wuhan-virus, despite it was officially acknowledged. More worryingly, the Chinese authorities have decided to shut down outbound transportation from Wuhan on Thursday morning.

10/ Ctizens of Wuhan were rushing to leave the city by trains or airplanes to go to other cities or countries despite having fever or other symptoms of pneumonia, suggesting a massive outbreak is imminent.

11/ There are cases of Wuhan-virus infection reported in HK, Taiwan, Singapore, US & France, scientists suspected that there may be 1000 to 2300 actual infections since Dec 2019, which are significantly higher than those 550 confirmed cases released by Chinese government so far.