WUHAN (NYTIMES) - One week into a lockdown, anger and anxiety deepened in China on Thursday (Jan 30) as the central province at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak endured shortages of hospital beds, medical supplies and doctors.

In a sign of growing frustration, a relative of a patient infected with the virus beat up a doctor at a hospital in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, the state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday, citing the police.

The man was accused of pulling and damaging the doctor's mask and protective clothing - potentially exposing him to the virus - after his father-in-law died in the hospital. The man was later detained.

At the same time, hospitals in the region renewed pleas to the public for help to replenish their supplies, which were fast disappearing. The shortages have become especially severe in Huanggang, a city of seven million not far from Wuhan, where some medical staff members were wearing raincoats and garbage bags as shoe covers to protect against infection, according to Yicai, a financial news site.

Amid growing unease, the World Health Organisation declared a global health emergency, which acknowledges that the disease now represents a risk beyond China. Nations can then decide whether to shut their borders, cancel flights or screen people arriving at ports of entry.

Also on Thursday, Chinese government agencies announced plans to issue subsidies of up to US$43 (S$59) per day to front-line medical workers and to reopen factories to boost production of medical supplies and protective gear.

"We absolutely cannot let Huanggang become a second Wuhan," Mr Wang Xiaodong, the governor of Hubei province, said at a news briefing on Wednesday.

On Thursday evening, provincial leaders said at a news briefing that the director of Huanggang's health committee had been fired.

For many Chinese, such decisive government announcements are too little, too late. Concerns have grown as the death toll from the coronavirus quickly ticked upwards, rising by 42 to hit 213 on Friday. All but one of those recent deaths occurred in Hubei province; the other died in the south-western province of Sichuan.

Fuelling the anger on Thursday was the publication this week of a new paper about the coronavirus in The New England Journal of Medicine by a team of researchers affiliated with, among other places, the Chinese Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Hubei Provincial Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Drawing on data from the first 425 confirmed cases in Wuhan, the paper states that "there is evidence that human-to-human transmission has occurred among close contacts since the middle of December 2019".

Chinese people online were incensed, asking why the government had waited until Jan 20 to inform the public that the virus was capable of being transmitted from human to human. By Thursday evening, many had seized on the paper as evidence that the authors had purposely withheld valuable information out of academic self-interest.

"I'm about to explode, I need an explanation from the authors!!!!" Professor Wang Liming of Zhejiang University wrote in a widely shared social media post that was quickly deleted.

"As a researcher with first-hand information, you knew that the virus could be transmitted between humans three weeks before the public did. Did you do what you were supposed to do?"

As China raced to contain the outbreak, countries grappled with how to evacuate their citizens from Wuhan and how to stop the virus from spreading.

Australia announced a plan to evacuate its citizens in Wuhan to Christmas Island, which has played an important but chequered role in the country's contentious use of faraway sites to house refugees and other migrants. The announcement drew immediate questions over the implications of using the island as a quarantine site.

Moving people to Christmas Island is not an "appropriate solution", Dr Tony Bartone, the president of the Australian Medical Association, said in a television news interview.

He said the government had other, more suitable facilities, such as military sites.

In Japan, a furore erupted over the refusal of some evacuees who had returned to submit to medical testing.

Two of the Japanese citizens who have been evacuated from Wuhan refused to be tested for the coronavirus, leading the prime minister to explain that citizens could not be forced to submit to a medical examination.

Japanese social media users said the travellers, who arrived in Tokyo on Wednesday, were putting the country at risk. Some called them terrorists.

"We tried to persuade the two returnees from Wuhan for many hours" to be tested, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in Parliament on Thursday, when asked about the government's treatment of repatriated citizens.

"But there is no legally binding force, and that's a great regret," Mr Abe said.

Russia ordered 16 of the approximately 25 crossing points on its nearly 4,200km border with China to be closed as of midnight local time as fears about the coronavirus outbreak mounted in Moscow.

"We have to do everything to protect our people," Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Thursday in televised remarks at a Cabinet meeting.

Italy blocked thousands of people from leaving a cruise ship that docked on Thursday at an Italian port, over concerns that someone aboard might have the virus.

Although a Chinese national with fever later tested negative for the coronavirus and the Italian authorities said passengers were allowed to disembark, for much of the day the country was gripped by fears that the coronavirus had arrived on its shores.

That concern proved warranted later on Thursday, when the government reported the country's first two confirmed cases, neither of which were related to the ship.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte also announced that Italy had halted all flights to and from China.

In the United States, health officials on Thursday reported the first case of person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus in the country. The patient is the husband of a woman who returned from Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the virus, and was the first reported case in Chicago, officials said at a news briefing.

Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said the US could see a positive by-product from China's woes because the outbreak could prompt employers to move jobs to its shores.

"I don't want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease," Mr Ross said in an interview on Fox Business. "I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America. Some to the US, probably some to Mexico as well."

His remarks may be seen as insensitive to a country in crisis, and he has faced such criticism in the past. During the government shutdown in early 2019, he suggested that furloughed workers should take out loans while they went without pay for more than a month.

With the evacuations and lockdown, Wuhan, a typically bustling metropolis, has been transformed into a ghost town. Since the city was effectively sealed off last week, most shops have shut down. The city government has put restrictions on traffic. The lack of transportation options has made it difficult for medical workers and sick residents to get to hospitals.

But most residents of Wuhan are not leaving their homes because they are too scared of catching the virus.

"Local Wuhan residents who aren't worried about being sick aren't even going on the streets," Mr Chen Qiushi, a Beijing-based lawyer and citizen journalist who has been in Wuhan since the lockdown began, said in a video blog posted on Thursday.

"The locals are all very scared," he added. "I'm starting to get scared."