One month after makeshift hospitals opened to chaos and confusion at the epicentre of China's coronavirus epidemic, frontline doctor Ma Yonggang is finally seeing more empty beds as fewer patients arrive.

When 43-year-old Ma was first summoned to a sports stadium converted into a medical facility on February 4, it was a virtual construction site with electrical wiring and beds still being installed.

Separated from his wife and young child who had returned to eastern Shandong province for Lunar New Year, Ma said he felt "scared and anxious" when the call from the jury-rigged Wuchang hospital came in the middle of the night.

But the situation has slowly improved, with the number of patients receiving treatment in the improvised hospital declining from a high of 760 in mid-February to 320 earlier this week.

"We had 30-40 patients being discharged per day, but the number of patients admitted was only a dozen or so. This was when the whole situation changed for us," Ma, who is the hospital's deputy director, told AFP in a video call from Wuhan.

"Now, we admit very few new patients and about three to four recovered patients are discharged each day."

The situation Ma described tallies with officials' accounts of a slowdown in new infections in Wuhan, an industrial city of 11 million people where the virus is believed to have emerged at a market that sold wild animals.

It was not always like this.

AFP saw people standing in line for hours to see doctors in Wuhan's hospitals during the first weeks of the crisis, when the facilities lacked enough beds for the thousands of new patients.

- Conditions 'were quite bad' -

Hastily converted from sports stadiums, schools and cultural venues, Wuhan's 16 makeshift "ark" hospitals were designed to ease the burden on the city's overstretched healthcare system.

But in the early stages of the outbreak, they also suffered from the same widespread shortages of medical protective supplies as the city's designated hospitals, Ma said.

The hospitals offer basic treatment and diagnosis for patients with mild to moderate symptoms, as well as simple recreational facilities.

"When the hospital was opened, the facilities were only for controlling the outbreak, so the living conditions for patients and medical staff ... were quite bad," he said in the interview arranged by the State Council's information office.

"Now, the conditions have improved a lot, for example now we have patient exercise areas and bathrooms, and we have indoor heating and catering services."

Ma admitted that conditions fell short of patients' expectations and those hoping for small rooms to themselves were not prepared for the open-plan layout of the makeshift hospital.

"Once they arrived, they realised that there were several patients in a large open room and began to doubt whether they could be treated successfully," he said.

- Mourning fallen doctors -

More than 80,000 people have been infected and more than 3,000 killed by the new coronavirus in mainland China, with the majority in Wuhan.

Chinese health authorities and a team of World Health Organization experts say that at least 3,000 Chinese medical workers have caught the virus -- mostly in Wuhan -- and at least 11 have lost their lives.

But according to Ma, none of the medical workers at the city's makeshift hospitals have been infected.

The death last month of whistleblower Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old Wuhan ophthalmologist who was punished for trying to alert people to the outbreak in December, unleashed a torrent of grief and anger at the authorities.

"We felt extremely sad at his death," Ma said.

"We will always mourn (Li and the other fallen doctors), and we must learn from them and dedicate ourselves even more to fighting the virus."

One of the latest victims was Li's colleague, Mei Zhongming, who was deputy director of ophthalmology department at the central hospital and died from the virus on Tuesday.

While Ma said he was nervous about the possibility of infection, he remained committed to his duties.

"As Wuhan medical workers, this historic responsibility has fallen on our shoulders," he said.

China's coronavirus death toll surpasses 3,000
Beijing (AFP) March 5, 2020 - China on Thursday reported 31 more deaths from the new coronavirus epidemic, taking the country's overall toll past 3,000, with the number of new infections slightly increasing.

At least 3,012 people have now died nationwide in the outbreak that first emerged in the central city of Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, in December.

Most of the deaths -- 2,305 -- and cases have been recorded in Wuhan, which has been under an unprecedented lockdown along with the rest of Hubei since late January.

But the quarantine and other travel restrictions across the country appear to be paying off, with official figures showing a generally steady drop in new cases in recent weeks.

The National Health Commission also reported 139 new cases on Thursday, slightly up from 119 the previous day, raising the overall number of confirmed infections to 80,409.

Only five of the new cases were outside Hubei.

But China is now worried about importing cases from abroad as the virus has since spread to some 80 countries and territories, infecting more than 10,000 and killing more than 200 abroad.

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China reports fall in new virus cases for third day, 38 more deaths
Beijing (AFP) March 4, 2020
China on Wednesday reported 38 more deaths from the new coronavirus but a fall in fresh cases for a third consecutive day. The death toll nationwide is now 2,981, the National Health Commission said, with more than 80,200 people infected in total. There were 115 new cases in central Hubei province - the epicentre where the virus first emerged in December last year - and only four elsewhere in the country. The figures in China have generally been declining in recent weeks as a series of dra ... read more