London: The temples will not hold their fairs, the trains and planes will not run and the new movie releases, from Leap to Chinatown Detective 3, have been cancelled. China must spend this New Year holiday racing to detect and contain a new respiratory disease, the Wuhan coronavirus, which has killed at least 26 people and scientists think has spread to several thousand.

There is good news. The virus is not as deadly as SARS. In fact, it is only about 10 times as deadly as seasonal flu, meaning 98 per cent of people who get it will survive (versus 85 per cent for SARS). While this isn't exactly wonderful, it isn't apocalyptic either. Crucially, however, China is managing the Wuhan virus very differently from how it managed SARS in 2003.

A militia member takes a driver's temperature at a checkpoint at a highway toll gate in Wuhan. Credit:AP

According to Peter Kellam, a virus professor at Imperial College, London, the most important factor in managing a pandemic is "sharing". This is hardly an area in which Chinese authorities have traditionally excelled, but for scientific purposes, both China and international institutions appear to have learnt from Beijing's disastrous attempt to cover up SARS. Scientists across the world have been given access to data like confirmed infection rates and the virus's genome, allowing the system to gear up quickly, developing diagnostic tests and researching potential drugs. An inspection team from the World Health Organisation visited Wuhan this week and "commended" the Chinese authorities for their handling of the crisis.

As so often in China, however, the boundaries of freedom are strictly drawn. Official state media outlets have kept reporting low-key, placing news of the outbreak below reports of Xi Jinping's latest marvellous speech. For now, non-state media have had their leash loosened, but they are ever-alert as to when it shortens again. Whether it is air pollution, anti-foreign rage or product contamination, the pattern is the same. Periods of relative openness are followed by crackdowns before the debate gets "out of hand".