China clamps down on Coronavirus coverage as cases surge

As the number of coronavirus infections in China continues to surge without any sign of slowing down, the Communist government has clamped down on the news media and the internet, signaling an effort to control the narrative about a crisis that has become a once-in-a-generation challenge for leaders in Beijing.

Chinese health officials said Thursday that 563 people had died from the virus, up from 490 people the day before, and that there were 28,018 confirmed cases of infection. Thousands more cases are being reported every day, and many Chinese fear that the virus’s spread is not being adequately controlled, reports The New York Times.

With frustrations running high across the country, China’s leaders appear to be strengthening information controls after a brief spell in which news organizations were able to report thoroughly on the crisis, and many negative comments about the official response were left uncensored online.

In recent days, both state-run news media and more commercially minded outlets have been told to focus on positive stories about virus relief efforts, according to three people at Chinese news organizations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal directives.

Internet platforms have removed a range of articles that suggest shortcomings in the Chinese government’s response or are otherwise negative about the outbreak.

Local officials have also cracked down on what they call online “rumors” about the virus. China’s public security ministry this week lauded such efforts, which have continued even after one person who was reprimanded for spreading rumors turned out to be a doctor sounding the alarm about early cases of the illness.

The Chinese government has shifted its strategy for information control in response to the changing nature of the public’s discontent, said King-wa Fu, an associate professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong.

In the early days of the crisis, online vitriol had largely been directed at the local authorities. Now, more of the anger is being aimed at higher-level leadership, and there seems to be more of it over all, he said.

Late last month, for instance, after The New England Journal of Medicine published a research paper about early cases of the virus, Chinese web users pounced on the fact that several of the authors worked for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, saying they should have been informing the public, not furthering their research careers.

“Now I understand,” one person wrote on the social platform Weibo. “The C.D.C.’s purpose all along was to publish research papers.”

“I’m so mad that I’m speechless,” wrote another.

The researchers later said that all their information about the infections had already been made public before the paper was written.

At this point, Professor Fu said, more censorship “wouldn’t stop the public frustration.”

The rapidly rising number of infections and deaths from the new virus has put renewed pressure on the senior leadership in China. Hospitals near the center of the epidemic have been overwhelmed, and people with flulike symptoms have been turned away. Many cases have not been diagnosed because of a shortage of testing kits.

Still, the number of people in China who are recovering is rising, as well. And on Wednesday, a senior Chinese health expert attributed the large rise in the number of confirmed cases to the fact that hospitals had been able to diagnose the virus more quickly. The number of suspected cases has dropped for the same reason, the expert, Li Xingwang, said at an official news briefing.

The new curbs on information appeared to have been set in motion earlier this week, when China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and other senior officials said at a meeting that they would “strengthen control over online media” as one of several measures to maintain social stability.

The leaders said that the government’s propaganda efforts should focus on “vividly conveying the stirring achievements from the front lines of epidemic prevention” and “showing the Chinese people’s unity and spirit of pulling together in difficult times,” according to Xinhua, the official news agency.

After the meeting, a top official at China’s central propaganda department told the state broadcaster CCTV that his department had dispatched more than 300 journalists to the epidemic’s front lines in Wuhan and its surrounding province, Hubei.

The official, Zhang Xiaoguo, said the department would make publicizing the government’s prevention-and-control campaign its “highest priority.”

It was unclear whether the 300 journalists included those who were already reporting in Hubei, or whether they would be new arrivals. It was also unclear what news organizations they would represent. A spokeswoman for the propaganda department declined to comment.

The effort has been met with some sarcasm on social media.

“Positive energy is coming at last,” one user wrote on Weibo, using the Chinese government’s term for the kind of boosterish, uncritical tone it prefers to see in news coverage.

The post was liked more than 27,000 times. But all the comments below the post were eventually deleted, and new comments have been forbidden.

Employees at Chinese news organizations this week described a mandatory change of tone in their stories and fresh orders to hew to the official line.

Journalists at the Xinhua news agency, for example, have been told to keep their coverage of the virus positive, according to internal instructions seen by The New York Times. They were ordered not to continue mentioning the fact that the World Health Organization had declared a global health emergency and not to cover every infection discovered overseas.

“Only cover what needs to be covered,” the instructions said.

Across the rest of China’s news landscape, articles on a broad range of themes have been blocked or deleted online in recent days.

They include a report in the financial newsmagazine Caijing about deaths in Wuhan that might not have been counted in the official tally; a firsthand account of a funeral home in Wuhan; and even an interview with the head of a popular restaurant chain who said that he might be out of cash in a few months if the virus were not contained.

Beijing is moving to tighten up its management of the epidemic as governments worldwide continue cutting themselves off from China to stop coronavirus cases from being imported.

Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory, said on Wednesday that it would begin requiring all people who arrive from mainland China to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine. Hong Kong has 21 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including three that were transmitted locally.

Carrie Lam, the city’s top official, has resisted demands from some lawmakers and medical workers to close the border completely, calling it discriminatory and not in line with W.H.O. guidelines. But she has enacted a series of measures, including closing all but three border crossings, that have resulted in a sharp drop in entries from the mainland.

The United States and other countries have also imposed entry restrictions on visitors from China. Such measures have thrown the global travel industry into disarray.

Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio of Italy said in an interview with The Associated Press that Italy’s flight ban on commercial flights to and from China, put into place on Jan. 30, could ease soon now that thermal scanners are being installed at airports throughout Italy and taking the temperatures of arriving passengers from all foreign flights.

Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based international airline, has asked its 27,000 employees to take three weeks of unpaid leave. The carrier has already cut nearly all flights to and from mainland China and has said it would pare back flights across its network as it faces its biggest emergency since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009.

Twenty people on a cruise ship carrying 2,666 passengers and 1,045 crew members and quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, have tested positive for the coronavirus, the cruise line, Princess Cruises, said on Wednesday. And another 170 people who may have been exposed have yet to be tested.

The ship arrived in Yokohama on Tuesday, but the authorities did not allow anyone off. An 80-year-old Hong Kong resident who had disembarked earlier in his home city was found to be infected.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Americans who had been in Wuhan as the outbreak worsened arrived in California on two evacuation flights arranged by the United States government. The 12th case of the coronavirus in the United States was confirmed on Wednesday.

Amid all the gloom, scientists in China provided a glimmer of hope this week. Chinese researchers reported preliminary success with a new approach for treating the coronavirus.

The researchers combined Arbidol, an antiviral drug used in Russia and China for treating influenza, with Darunavir, the anti-H.I.V. drug, for treating patients with the coronavirus, according to Changjiang News, a state-backed newspaper in Wuhan.

The researchers did not say how many patients had been treated with the combination therapy, and it could be too soon to assess its effectiveness. The findings have not been reviewed by outside experts.