Zhu Heping, a doctor from the ophthalmology department at Wuhan Central Hospital, died of novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) on Monday, according to several sources close to the matter.
Zhu was a colleague of "whistleblower" doctor Li Wenliang, who was deemed a "whistleblower" for sounding the alarm about a lurking outbreak in the early stages and died from the infection.
Zhu, aged 67, was an expert who was invited back to work after he had retired. Zhu was a hard-working and humble man, according to media reports, citing some of his colleagues and acquaintances. He was admitted into hospital in mid-February after being infected with COVID-19, and died from the disease on Monday morning, the reports said.
Two doctors from Wuhan Central Hospital and Tongji Hospital, in epicenter Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, confirmed this information with the Global Times.
Zhu was the third doctor from the ophthalmology department of Wuhan Central Hospital who died from the disease, after Li died on February 7 and his colleague Mei Zhongming, another 57-year-old eye doctor, died on Tuesday.
Another doctor from the thyroid and breast surgery department of the hospital, Jiang Xueqing, aged 55, also died from the coronavirus on March 1.
More than 3,000 medical staff in Central China's Hubei Province have been infected since the outbreak, of which 40 percent occurred in hospitals and 60 percent in communities, according to official data on Friday.
