“Everything comes one way from the above,” said Ms. Liu, referring to the government’s top-down style of communicating. “There is not a channel for local Wuhan people to communicate with the government so that we know what is happening, so we know that the government is aware of what we need.”

As a volunteer, Ms. Liu doesn’t provide transportation, food or face masks, but information. She starts her day by looking through online posts written by Wuhan citizens searching for help. She calls them to verify their details, makes edits to their posts and guides each person to the right authority or resource.

She has helped people file complaints, get treatment and hospital beds at a time when everyone in Wuhan seems to be struggling to make sense of the public health crisis caused by the coronavirus and people are desperate for any shred of information. There are cases in which people are sent to the wrong hospital; families who are unable to reach their sick or old relative; and patients with illnesses other than coronavirus who have nowhere to be treated.

More than 44,000 people have the coronavirus in Wuhan, the center of the outbreak. Nearly 2,000 have died in mainland China as of Wednesday. The government has been accused of being slow to respond and unforthcoming, making a bad situation worse.

“As a journalist, what I try to do is to make the unbalanced communication more balanced,” said Ms. Liu, who hasn’t left home for a month. She said her experience dealing with China’s opaque bureaucracy has helped her with the crisis. Still, she mostly feels powerless. There are just too many desperate people in Wuhan.