A 39-year-old man in Hong Kong became the second person to die from coronavirus outside of mainland China today. Hong Kong has shut 13 of its 16 border checkpoints with mainland China as pressure mounts to seal off the semiautonomous region completely. Over 2,500 medical workers in Hong Kong are on strike to demand the border closure as the infectious disease spreads. This is Hong Kong nurse Leslie Lee.
Leslie Lee: “Since I’ve experienced SARS, I don’t want Hong Kong to become just like it was 17 years ago. I hope the government listens to our demands, quickly closes all of the borders and brings this epidemic under control.”
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus is surging by over 2,000 per day and the death toll topped 425 earlier today, surpassing that of the deadly SARS outbreak in China in 2003. Click here to see our extended discussions about the coronavirus with Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.