But beneath the veil of silence, there are indications that the situation may be graver than records show.

The coronavirus may have begun to spread through the Hungarian population nearly a month ago, in a process technically known as community transmission, according to a secret readout written by a foreign diplomat who had been briefed in early March by the country director for the World Health Organization, Dr. Ledia Lazeri. The readout was later obtained by The New York Times.

Dr. Muller, the chief medical officer, said on Friday that Hungary was still in the cluster-spreading phase. She hinted that the country was on the threshold of community transmission.

But according to the diplomat’s secret readout, the W.H.O. privately believed that community transmission had begun by the second week of March, since the disease’s first known victims in Hungary moved freely through the country before being diagnosed and one even left for Serbia.

The main facility used for testing at that time, St. Laszlo Hospital in Budapest, was also helping to spread the disease rather than contain it, because infected people were unwittingly mingling there with those yet to catch the disease, the readout stated.

The W.H.O. also concluded that the Hungarian government’s data was unreliable, since so few people were being tested, the readout said.



Asked to comment on the readout, Dr. Lazeri denied making these assessments. An independent epidemiologist currently advising the government, Gergely Roth, also said the country had not yet entered the community transmission phase, and said the term had a contested definition.



But diplomats from other missions said they had heard troubling information from a W.H.O. official.