WUHAN (China) — Facing growing pressure to contain a deadly viral outbreak that has spread halfway around the world, China’s ruling Communist Party raced on Tuesday (Jan 21) to confront the disease, slapping restrictions on the city where it started and warning that anyone who hides infections will be “forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame”.

The response by the Chinese leadership, which has come under intensifying criticism that it has been slow to acknowledge the severity of the outbreak, came as fatalities from the disease tripled to at least nine.

Infections surged from 200 to 440, and global financial markets were rattled by the possibility of a pandemic emanating from the world’s most populous country during Chinese New Year — Asia’s heaviest travel season.

Already, cases of the pneumonia-like virus have been found in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea, and on Tuesday the first case was confirmed in the United States. Airports in Atlanta and Chicago said they would screen passengers from Wuhan, joining airports in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and cities around the world in doing so.

North Korea temporarily closed its borders to foreign tours, the vast majority of them from China. The World Health Organisation has called a meeting Wednesday over whether to declare the outbreak an international health emergency.

In Wuhan, the central Chinese city of 11 million where the outbreak began, the authorities have banned group tours out of the city and ordered vehicles checked for live animals. Nervous residents are buying up face masks and flooding hospitals to report fevers and coughs. Some schools are canceling classes and even Buddhist temples are turning away the faithful.

At home and abroad, the Chinese authorities are facing demands for greater transparency in their disclosures about the disease, as new cases emerge in other major Chinese cities. As of late Tuesday, there were 440 cases in 13 provinces in China.

The outbreak is testing China’s leader, Mr Xi Jinping, and the party’s penchant for secrecy in moments of crisis, 17 years after Beijing drew widespread criticism for withholding information and acting slowly in handling the outbreak of Sars, which killed more than 800 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide.

Mr Xi, who has sought to expand China’s global influence, seems eager to shake the shadow of Sars and show that Beijing can handle a public health crisis like a responsible world power. A top party committee on Tuesday said in stark terms that it would not tolerate any efforts to hide infections.

“Whoever deliberately delays or conceals reporting for the sake of their own interests will be forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame,” the committee said in a post on a popular social media site.

On Monday, China’s health commission said it would respond with measures intended to manage outbreaks of the most virulent diseases, including mandatory reporting of cases. It classified the virus as a class B infectious disease — a category that includes diseases such as Sars.

But the government, wary of letting fear run rampant, is also working meticulously to control the narrative about the virus by censoring news articles and social media posts. The police in Wuhan investigated eight citizens this month for spreading what it described as rumours on the internet.

Now, even as the government works to isolate sick patients amid travel by millions of people making visits for the Chinese New Year holiday, there is concern that the party’s long-held reluctance to divulge damaging news could hinder the effort to contain the virus.

For weeks, the government had largely treated the outbreak as a problem isolated to Wuhan. It was only after the Hong Kong news media reported that cases of the coronavirus had been detected elsewhere that the government began acknowledging, early Monday, that the disease had spread to other cities.

Many wondered why the central government waited until Monday to allow a top health expert to speak publicly about the outbreak. The expert not only corroborated what the Hong Kong news media had already reported but confirmed vital new information: That the virus spreads between people.

“The response is not fast enough, it’s not strong enough,” said Mr Shen Zhengjiang, 57, a teacher, as he looked for masks at a pharmacy in Wuhan on Tuesday. “The local officials are paying attention to this now only because Xi Jinping spoke up.”

The Chinese government, which has been praised by the WHO for its efforts so far, has said it took time to analyse the coronavirus, which experts believe appears to be mostly transmitted to humans by animals.

The delay in reporting the spread of the disease was attributed to technological challenges, but also bureaucratic ones. Some hospitals lacked testing kits, according to remarks on Monday by Dr Zhong Nanshan, a prominent scientist who is leading a government-appointed panel of experts helping control the outbreak.

The process was also slowed down, he said, because local hospitals were required to submit cases to the central health commission in Beijing for review before going public.

For weeks, the authorities in Wuhan seemed to play down the threat posed by the virus. The health department said it had been found only in people who visited a local market that had sold live fish, birds and other animals, and that workers had disinfected and shut down the site.

Questions have emerged on Chinese social media about whether the government has been forthcoming. Many articles and posts, including some using the hashtag #WuhanSars, were censored.

It was not until Monday that the government changed course, after news outlets in Hong Kong reported over the weekend that there were several potential cases of the illness in Shanghai and Shenzhen, a southern city. The central government dispatched Dr Zhong, a renowned expert with a reputation for bluntness, to Wuhan.

Dr Zhong revealed for the first time that the virus could spread from person to person — noting, for example, that one patient had infected 14 medical workers.

Dr Zhong won wide praise from the Chinese public, and memes circulated online contrasting his urgent tone with the calm words of local officials.

The spread of the virus has upended the Chinese New Year holiday this week, when millions of Chinese return to their hometowns to celebrate.

In Wuhan, residents have cancelled plans to go out to lavish meals for the new year and say they are avoiding enclosed spaces like movie theaters. Some firms have instructed employees to stay home. Many people now wear masks throughout the day, as they make dinner, play cards or chat with friends.

Some residents are packing up and leaving Wuhan, vowing to stay away until the virus is contained.

At the Wuhan airport on Tuesday, Ms Luo Jie, 62, a retiree, rushed to catch a flight to Beijing that she had booked that morning. She said she wanted to “escape” because the outbreak reminded her of the Sars crisis.

“I hope the government will report the epidemic honestly,” she said. “That’s how to set people’s minds at ease.” THE NEW YORK TIMES