“The chances of him spreading the disease is very low,” said Mr. Rungrueng, noting that the space between beds in the general ward was more than a yard. “Our medical staff always wash their hands in and out. It will not be communicable to others.”

Yet in Wuhan, the coronavirus has infected medical workers, including a doctor who had raised the alarm about the mysterious virus in December, only to have the local government berate him for “illegal behavior.”

As the virus has spread across the region, some governments have remained in denial.

At one hospital in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, a slide show during a presentation on preventing the spread of coronavirus said: “Don’t be so afraid of the coronavirus. It won’t last long because ‘made in China.’”

“Health is not a joke, and the virus is not a joke either,” said Aung Aung, a surgeon at Mandalay General Hospital. “I don’t think Myanmar has the modern techniques to know whether the virus is here.”

On Friday, Myanmar announced its first suspected case, involving a Chinese man who had arrived by plane from Guangzhou. Myanmar does not have the capacity to test for this specific coronavirus, said U Zaw Htay, a government spokesman. Any samples will need to be sent to Thailand or Hong Kong, which could take up to a week.

Even high-level officials have been trading in folk remedies. After a Facebook user in Myanmar wrote a widely read tribute to onions as a way to prevent transmission of the coronavirus, the chief minister of Tanintharyi Division, U Myint Mg, shared the post on his Facebook page.

“The Chinese government has announced that people should consume and have on hand as many onions as they can,” the post read, with no basis in fact.