Bloomberg News. January 22, 2020. Read the original article here. 

Hundreds of millions of Chinese web users have been furiously discussing the outbreak of a new deadly virus that’s killed nine people and infected hundreds.

Posts on the infection spreading to medical staff — a development that marks a new phase of severity for the outbreak — were viewed more than 1.5 billion times on Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like service, while a Beijing News editorial calling for a transparent system of information updates got more than 100,000 views on WeChat, the country’s most popular messaging app.

During the SARS outbreak 17 years ago, social media platforms did not exist to spread awareness and knowledge of preventive measures, like wearing masks and washing hands regularly while travelling. But the unfettered online discussion also runs the risk of fanning criticism of Chinese officials.

Users on Weibo and WeChat complained about a lack of fresh information and questioned why authorities didn’t tell the public earlier about the pathogen spreading between humans. Some posts speculating about unverified cases and linking to foreign media coverage were removed, said Fu King-wa, an associate professor at Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre.

But there seemed to be no major censorship effort on the two platforms on Wednesday.

Most of the criticism on Weibo and WeChat focused on Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus originated. Officials initially reacted to the social media flurry by cracking down on those they accused of spreading rumours: local police said on Jan. 1 they investigated and penalized eight people who allegedly spread misinformation.

There have been 440 confirmed cases of coronavirus across 13 provinces as of Jan. 21, China’s National Health Commission said at a briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. Another 1,394 patients are under medical observation. The country will start nationwide screening to tackle the growing outbreak, the commission said.

In 2003, SARS killed 800 people across Asia and China’s delay in sharing information was blamed for allowing the disease to spread unchecked, fueling a mistrust of public health authorities that lingers today.

Pneumonia Threat Widens

Coronavirus has spread from China to at least six other locations

Sources: National and municipal health authorities

Note: Number of cases as of 11 a.m. Hong Kong time

“People don’t realize how serious this outbreak is because the local government wasn’t transparent enough,” said one user on Weibo.

The Beijing News editorial that was widely read demanded Wuhan officials “start offering better explanations” so that those responsible for the outbreak can be held accountable.

“There are criticisms in China’s social media about how clumsy the local government in Wuhan has been in handling the issue,” said Zha Daojiong, a professor at Peking University’s School of International Studies. “But the more pertinent point ought to be some health education aimed at educating the general public, because self-help is perhaps the first line of defence.”

Social media users do appear to be using the platforms to find information to protect themselves from the virus. Phrases related to the virus were among the most-searched on Weibo, though the service briefly promoted “President Xi Jinping’s New Year’s Greetings” above those trending topics.

A mobile game where players create and evolve a pathogen with the goal of wiping out humanity is also becoming popular. Plague Inc., a 2012 indie strategy game that models the spread of an epidemic, became the most downloaded paid app on the Chinese Apple App Store since Tuesday, according to research firm Sensor Tower.