A top Chinese official visiting Wuhan has been heckled by residents who yelled “fake, fake, everything is fake” as she inspected the work of a neighbourhood committee charged with taking care of quarantined residents.

Vice-premier Sun Chunlan, one of the most senior government officials to visit the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, toured a residential community in Wuhan’s Qingshan district on Thursday. According to state media, Sun was inspecting the operations of the neighbourhood committee, meant to make checks on residents each day and distribute necessities like medicine, food and fresh vegetables.

Videos posted online showed Sun and a delegation walking along the grounds while residents appeared to shout from their apartment windows, “fake, fake,” “it’s all fake,” as well as “we protest”. Some could be heard yelling, “formalism,” a term that has employed frequently recently to criticise ineffective measures taken by government representatives for the sake of appearances.

Wuhan reported 126 new coronavirus cases on Thursday but the wider province of Hubei excluding the capital recorded none for the first time during the outbreak, authorities said on Friday.

Since 12 February, all residential compounds in Wuhan have been put under lockdown, barring most residents from leaving their homes. Neighbourhood committees have been charged with handling everything from arranging hospital visits and quarantines of residents, as well as residents’ supplies of food and daily temperature checks.

But many residents have complained to the Guardian and other media that the community workers have not provided needed assistance. Community workers have complained that they have been overwhelmed.

Global Times (@globaltimesnews) "It's fake! It's fake!" shout residents of a community in #COVID19 epicenter Wuhan in a viral video on China’s social media. They have accused property management of cheating them by only appearing to provide promised necessities. Investigation is underway https://t.co/kzq4gbB4RM pic.twitter.com/0ujObfedR8

In an unusual turn of events, on Friday various Chinese state media outlets reported the videos showing public discontent. Such videos are frequently censored from Chinese social media and government-run outlets have been focused on stories of “positive energy” to boost morale in the fight against the coronavirus.

Yet, the People’s Daily posted a video subtitled in English showing one person shouting “fake, fake,” which has since been removed. Other outlets like Beijing Youth Daily reported on the incident. A government-affiliated account on WeChat, Taoran Notes, said in an essay posted on Thursday that all the facts of the incident were “basically true”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supermarket workers prepare to deliver bags of vegetables to residents by van in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on 5 March. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images

According to state broadcaster CCTV, Sun held a meeting immediately after the incident to deal with the complaints. Staff have been dispatched to visit the residents one by one, according to Taoran.

Observers say state media may be trying to co-opt discussion of the videos ,which circulated widely online, and provide their own narrative of events. The incident also provides the central government an opportunity to show it responding to public sentiment, after a wave of public anger over the suppression of early warnings of the virus.

“It is by not covering up problems that we can resolve them,” the article by Taoran Notes said. “We must face the problems in a realistic manner to gain the understanding and support of the masses.”

Versions of the video were still being posted on social media on Friday. “If they were not pushed to the edge, Chinese people would not shout,” one Weibo user wrote.

Another comment read: “What were they shouting? They were shouting the truth. For years, when these high-level meetings or inspections took place, those who would tell the truth would be sent away or shut up.” Another said: “Do you hear the people?”

Elsewhere in China, schools in provinces reporting no new cases for a number of days, started to set their opening dates in a sign of the country returning to normal.

Qinghai, a northwestern province in China that had reported no new infections for 29 days as of 5 March said it would stagger the start date of different school days from 11 March to 20 March, according to a notice posted on an official website on Friday.



Separately, the southwestern province of Guizhou, which reported no new infections for 18 days, had said at the end of February that schools would start from 16 March.

Additional reporting by Lillian Yang