Many Chinese are too worried to visit a hospital as they fear they might catch the highly contagious virus. FMTNews Epidemic Quarantine Coronavirus Covid19 Alibaba
BEIJING: Spooked by a sneeze or a cough, Chinese consumers are turning to online consultations in droves for advice about possible coronavirus symptoms – a boon for a fledgling industry that has struggled to win over customers.
The surge of inquiries has also been driven by healthcare platforms offering some services for free amid the epidemic. Such is the state of fretfulness that “Always thinking I’ve been infected by the virus” has become a trending topic with more than 570 million views on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform.
Alibaba Health Information Technology Ltd said it exceeded 100,000 consultations a day on Jan 29 and that some of its respiratory doctors were providing more than 200 consultations daily. It did not provide comparisons with pre-outbreak levels. Compared to other internet services, online healthcare is not used as frequently and does not benefit as much from word of mouth, industry executives say.
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