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Wuhan, Feb 9: President Xi Jinping strode onstage before an adoring audience in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing less than three weeks ago, trumpeting his successes in steering China through a tumultuous year and promising "landmark" progress in 2020.

"Every single Chinese person, every member of the Chinese nation, should feel proud to live in this great era," he declared to applause on the day before the Lunar New Year holiday. "Our progress will not be halted by any storms and tempests."

Xi made no mention of a dangerous new coronavirus that had already taken tenacious hold in the country. As he spoke, the government was locking down Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, in a frantic attempt to stop the virus spreading from its epicenter.

The coronavirus epidemic, which has killed more than 800 people in China as of Sunday and sickened tens of thousands, comes as Xi has struggled with a host of other challenges: a slowing economy, huge protests in Hong Kong, an election in Taiwan that rebuffed Beijing and a protracted trade war with the United States.

Now Xi faces an accelerating health crisis that is also a political one: a profound test of the authoritarian system he has built around himself over the past seven years. As the Chinese government struggles to contain the virus amid rising public discontent with its performance, the changes that Xi has ushered in could make it difficult for him to escape blame.

"It’s a big shock to the legitimacy of the ruling party. I think it could be only second to the June 4 incident of 1989. It’s that big," said Rong Jian, a writer about politics in Beijing, referring to the armed crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters that year.

"There’s no doubt about his control over power," he added, "but the manner of control and its consequences have hurt his legitimacy and reputation."

Xi himself has recognized what is at stake, calling the outbreak "a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance."

Yet as China’s battle with the coronavirus intensified, Xi put the country’s No. 2 leader, Li Keqiang, in charge of a leadership group handling the emergency, effectively turning him into the public face of the government’s response. It was Li Keqiang who traveled to Wuhan to visit doctors.

Xi, by contrast, receded from public view for several days. That was not without precedent, though it stood out in this crisis, after previous Chinese leaders had used times of disaster to try to show a more common touch. State television and newspapers almost always lead with fawning coverage of Xi’s every move.

That retreat from the spotlight, some analysts said, signaled an effort by Xi to insulate himself from a campaign that may falter and draw public ire. Yet Xi has consolidated power, sidelining or eliminating rivals, so there are few people left to blame when something goes wrong.

"Politically, I think he is discovering that having total dictatorial power has a downside, which is that when things go wrong or have a high risk of going wrong, then you also have to bear all the responsibility," said Victor Shih, an associate professor at the University of California San Diego who studies Chinese politics.

Much of the country’s population has been told to stay at home, factories remain closed, and airlines have cut service. Experts warn that the coronavirus could slam the economy if not swiftly contained.

The government is also having trouble controlling the narrative. Xi now faces unusually sharp public discontent that even China’s rigorous censorship apparatus has been unable to stifle entirely.

The death of an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, Dr. Li Wenliang, who was censured for warning his medical school classmates of the spread of a dangerous new disease in December, has unleashed a torrent of pent-up public grief and rage over the government’s handling of the crisis. Chinese academics have launched at least two petitions in the wake of Li’s death, each calling for freedom of speech.

State media still portray Xi as ultimately in control, and there’s no sign that he faces a serious challenge from within the party leadership. The crisis, though, has already tainted China’s image as an emerging superpower — efficient, stable and strong — that could eventually rival the United States.

How much the crisis might erode Xi’s political standing remains to be seen, but it could weaken his position in the long run as he prepares to take a likely third term as Communist Party general secretary in 2022.

In 2018, Xi won approval to remove the constitutional limits on his term as the country’s president, making his plan for another five-year term seem all but certain.

If Xi comes out of this crisis politically insecure, the consequences are unpredictable. He may become more open to compromise within the party elite. Or he may double down on the imperious ways that have made him China’s most powerful leader in generations.

"Xi’s grip on power is not light," said Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"While the ham-fisted response to this crisis undoubtedly adds a further blemish to Xi’s tenure in office," Blanchette added, "the logistics of organizing a leadership challenge against him remain formidable."

In recent days, despite a dearth of public appearances, state media have portrayed Xi as a tireless commander-in-chief. This week they began calling the government’s fight against the virus the "people’s war," a phrase used in the official readout of Xi’s telephone call with President Donald Trump on Friday.

There are increasing signs that the propaganda this time is proving less than persuasive.

The Lunar New Year reception in Beijing where Xi spoke became a source of popular anger, a symbol of a government slow to respond to the suffering in Wuhan. Xi and other leaders appear to have been caught off guard by the ferocity of the epidemic.

Senior officials would almost certainly have been informed of the emerging crisis by the time national health authorities told the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, but neither Xi nor other officials in Beijing informed the public.

Xi’s first acknowledgment of the epidemic came Jan. 20, when brief instructions were issued under his name. His first public appearance after the lockdown of Wuhan on Jan. 23 came two days later, when he presided over a meeting of the Communist Party’s top body, the Politburo Standing Committee, which was shown at length on Chinese television. "We’re sure to be able to win in this battle," he proclaimed.

Back then, the death toll was 106. As it rose, Xi allowed other officials to take on more visible roles. Xi’s only appearances have been meeting foreign visitors in the Great Hall of the People or presiding over Communist Party meetings.

On Jan. 28, Xi met with the executive director of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and told Tedros that he "personally directed" the government’s response. Later reports in state media omitted the phrase, saying instead that Xi’s government was "collectively directing" the response.

Since nothing about how Xi is portrayed in state media happens by accident, the tweak suggested a deliberate effort to emphasize shared responsibility.

Xi did not appear on official broadcasts again for a week — until a highly scripted meeting Wednesday with the authoritarian leader of Cambodia, Hun Sen.

There is little evidence that Xi has given up power behind the scenes. Li Keqiang, the premier in formal charge of the leadership group for the crisis, and other officials have said that they take their orders from Xi. The group is filled with officials who work closely under Xi, and its directives emphasize his authority.

"The way the epidemic is being handled now from the top just doesn’t fit with the argument that there’s been a clear shift toward more collective, consultative leadership," said Holly Snape, a British Academy Fellow at the University of Glasgow who studies Chinese politics.

The scale of discontent and the potential challenges for Xi could be measured by repeated references online to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. Many of them came under the guise of viewer reviews of the popular television miniseries of the same name, which is still available for streaming inside China.

"In any era, any country, it’s the same. Cover everything up," one reviewer wrote.

The Soviet Union of 1986, however, was a different country than China in 2020.

The Soviet state was foundering when Chernobyl happened, said Sergey Radchenko, a professor of international relations at Cardiff University in Wales who has written extensively on Soviet and Chinese politics.

"The Chinese authorities, by contrast, are demonstrating an ability to cope, a willingness to take unprecedented measures — logistical feats that may actually increase the regime’s legitimacy," he added.

Radchenko compared Xi’s actions to those of previous leaders in moments of crisis: Mao Zedong after the Cultural Revolution or Deng Xiaoping after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

"He’s doing what Mao and Deng would have done in similar circumstances: stepping back into the shadows while remaining firmly in charge."

London, May 20: The current physical distancing guidelines of 6 feet may be insufficient to prevent COVID-19 transmission, according to a study which says a mild cough in low wind speeds can propel saliva droplets by as much as 18 feet.

Researchers, including those from the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, said a good baseline for studying the airborne transmission of viruses, like the one behind the COVID-19 pandemic, is a deeper understanding of how particles travel through the air when people cough.

In the study, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, they said even with a slight breeze of about four kilometres per hour (kph), saliva travels 18 feet in 5 seconds.

"The droplet cloud will affect both adults and children of different heights," said study co-author Dimitris Drikakis from the University of Nicosia.

According to the scientists, shorter adults and children could be at higher risk if they are located within the trajectory of the saliva droplets.

They said saliva is a complex fluid, which travels suspended in a bulk of surrounding air released by a cough, adding that many factors affect how saliva droplets travel in the air.

These factors, the study noted, include the size and number of droplets, how they interact with one another and the surrounding air as they disperse and evaporate, how heat and mass are transferred, and the humidity and temperature of the surrounding air.

In the study, the scientists created a computer simulation to examine the state of every saliva droplet moving through the air in front of a coughing person.

The model considered the effects of humidity, dispersion force, interactions of molecules of saliva and air, and how the droplets change from liquid to vapour and evaporate, along with a grid representing the space in front of a coughing person.

Each grid, the scientists said, holds information about variables like pressure, fluid velocity, temperature, droplet mass, and droplet position.

The study analysed the fates of nearly 1,008 simulated saliva droplets, and solved as many as 3.7 million equations.

"The purpose of the mathematical modelling and simulation is to take into account all the real coupling or interaction mechanisms that may take place between the main bulk fluid flow and the saliva droplets, and between the saliva droplets themselves," explained Talib Dbouk, another co-author of the study.

However, the researchers added that further studies are needed to determine the effect of ground surface temperature on the behaviour of saliva in air.

They also believe that indoor environments, especially ones with air conditioning, may significantly affect the particle movement through air.

This work is important since it concerns safety distance guidelines, and advances the understanding of the transmission of airborne diseases, Drikakis said.

Feb 22: A 20-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, travelled 400 miles(675 km) north to Anyang where she infected five relatives, without ever showing signs of infection, Chinese scientists reported on Friday, offering new evidence that the virus can be spread asymptomatically.

The case study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, offered clues about how the coronavirus is spreading, and suggested why it may be difficult to stop.

"Scientists have been asking if you can have this infection and not be ill? The answer is apparently, yes," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was not involved in the study.

China has reported a total of 75,567 cases of the virus known as COVID-19 to the World Health Organization (WHO) including 2,239 deaths, and the virus has already spread to 26 countries and territories outside of mainland China.

Researchers have reported sporadic accounts of individuals without any symptoms spreading the virus. What's different in this study is that it offers a natural lab experiment of sorts, Schaffner said.

"You had this patient from Wuhan where the virus is, travelling to where the virus wasn't. She remained asymptomatic and infected a bunch of family members and you had a group of physicians who immediately seized on the moment and tested everyone."

According to the report by Dr Meiyun Wang of the People's Hospital of Zhengzhou University and colleagues, the woman travelled from Wuhan to Anyang on Jan. 10 and visited several relatives. When they started getting sick, doctors isolated the woman and tested her for coronavirus. Initially, the young woman tested negative for the virus, but a follow-up test was positive.

All five of her relatives developed COVID-19 pneumonia, but as of Feb. 11, the young woman still had not developed any symptoms, her chest CT remained normal and she had no fever, stomach or respiratory symptoms, such as cough or sore throat.

Scientists in the study said if the findings are replicated, "the prevention of COVID-19 infection could prove challenging."

Key questions now, Schaffner said, are how often does this kind of transmission occur and when during the asymptomatic period does a person test positive for the virus.