The last conversation Salia Yang had with her mother was when she was lying in hospital in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the deadly coronavirus outbreak. Her mother, too weak and feverish to type, whispered halting voice messages into the family chat group. She was brainstorming how to get her parents — Salia’s grandparents — admitted to hospital. They were also infected with the virus but had been sent home to self-quarantine because the hospital had run out of beds. Four hours later, Ms Yang’s mother died. Two days later, her grandfather died too.

Ms Yang’s mother and grandfather are two of more than 800 people to have died from coronavirus. Anger among Chinese is growing as it becomes clear that city authorities knew the virus was spreading for at least three weeks before Ms Yang’s mother died but suppressed the information. More than three-quarters of the deaths have been in Wuhan, a city buckling under the stress of dealing with the epidemic and reeling from the government cover-up.

On January 18, about six weeks after the coronavirus started to spread in Wuhan, Ms Yang’s mother had dinner with five relatives to celebrate China’s lunar new year, the country’s most important holiday. Three days later, she started feeling feverish. Soon after, the rest of her family fell sick too. Over four days, she sought medical help at five hospitals but was turned away each time. Gasping for breath and unable to stand upright, she was finally admitted at a sixth hospital — but it was too late.