Death toll in China rises to 564 as lockdown enters third week.

The death toll and number of infections continued to soar in China, officials said Thursday.

It has been two weeks since the authorities in Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak, declared that the city would be locked down as they tried to contain the virus’s spread. The cordon that was first imposed around the city of 11 million quickly expanded to encircle roughly 50 million people in the province of Hubei.

The lockdown is unprecedented in scale and experts have questioned its effectiveness. Wuhan and Hubei Province have borne the brunt of the epidemic as the sudden shutdown of transportation links into and around the area slowed the shipping of vital medical supplies. The fatality rate in Wuhan is 4.1 percent and 2.8 percent in Hubei, compared to 0.17 percent elsewhere in mainland China.

The Chinese government says the quarantine has prevented a broader outbreak, but its effects on residents of the lockdown zone have raised ethical concerns.

“This is almost a humanitarian disaster” for the central Chinese region, said Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Center for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who cited insufficient supplies of medical equipment, food and other necessities. “The Wuhan people seem to be left high and dry by themselves.”