Overworked coronavirus doctor dies of sudden cardiac arrest

PanARMENIAN.Net - A Chinese doctor has died of a sudden cardiac arrest after fighting the new coronavirus on the front line for 10 days in a row, the Mail Online says.

Song Yingjie, 27, was a team leader at a local clinic in Hunan Province, which borders the epicentre of the outbreak Hubei, according to the local authority.

He was in charge of giving temperature checks to drivers and passengers on a motorway and had worked non-stop since January 25, officials said.

The news came as doctors nationwide were hailed as heroes for working day and night to tackle the epidemic, which started in the Chinese city of Wuhan and has killed at least 563.

The outbreak is an epidemic, which is when a disease takes hold of one community such as a country or region.

Although it has spread to dozens of countries, the outbreak is not yet classed as a pandemic, which is defined by the World Health Organization as the 'worldwide spread of a new disease'.