TIM MCLEAN: Morning folks, it's um Thursday the 6th of February. Middle of a ghost town here. Everyone is hiding. It's dire here. It's very dire. There's people dropping on the footpath, literally. Ok? I can't wait to get out of here, it's terrible.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: A city of 11 million people in lockdown.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: So here I am, sitting at home and reporting from where I live. That's because after returning from Hubei province at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak, everybody's told you need to go into quarantine, you can't be exposed to others for several weeks... This city, if I look out the window, it's dead. I mean, there are hardly any people in the streets.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: More than two-thousand dead, tens of thousands infected. Rising anger over how the crisis is being handled.

RICHARD MCGREGOR, EAST ASIA SENIOR FELLOW, LOWY INSTITUTE: Local officials in Wuhan did withhold information. The doctors in Wuhan who were talking about it were explicitly told to shut up.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: And scientists racing to find a vaccine.

PROFESSOR TREVOR DREW, DIRECTOR, CSIRO AUSTRALIAN ANIMAL HEALTH LABORATORY: We just don't know how this outbreak is going to develop or how many people are ultimately going to be infected, or ultimately going to die from this disease.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Tonight on 4 Corners, how the coronavirus outbreak sparked a global emergency.

TIM MCLEAN: I'm absolutely fucking petrified. The police are actually knocking on doors and taking temperatures and if people have a temperature, they're dragging them out. You don't get a fucking say in it. You don't get an option.

YING WANG: Wuhan is a very, very beautiful charming and bustling city in central China. It sits on the banks of the Yangtze River. It's a mega city. Wuhan is also home to the second most number of universities in China. People around the world come to Wuhan to study.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT It's right in the heart of the country, geographically as well as economically. Because all these trains and plains are coming through there. To have the outbreak start there, it's almost like if you wanted to pick the worst place for it to break out in, that would be the place you'd release it.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: In early December, people in Wuhan begin falling ill with a mystery virus.

PROFESSOR SHARON LEWIN, DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: The first infections in Wuhan started in early December, and I believe the first case in December the 1st. When a new infectious disease appears, it does take a little time to register and become aware that it's new. Um, so there were people presenting with a form of pneumonia.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Local doctors suspect the virus originated in the city's seafood and wildlife market.

PROFESSOR RAINA MACINTYRE, HEAD, BIOSECURITY PROGRAM, UNSW KIRBY INSTITUTE: So, we think the virus probably originated from bats, because that's what the genetic data tell us, but often there's an intermediary animal host. In this case they think pangolins might be implicated, which are a mammal, and that intermediary animal host might have been at the markets. We don't think that it's from eating those things specifically, like through the gastrointestinal tract, but more from handling them, from touching the contaminated meat. So, somewhere in that market we believe there must have been a contaminated animal source that infected the first cluster of humans.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: In late December as the number of cases increases, doctors in Wuhan begin sharing information in a private chat group.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: Well before any of us knew about the coronavirus, there were people who tried to sound the alarm. So, there were a group of whistle blowers who'd heard that there was this virus cluster, and they started speaking about it. Now, in particular, there was one doctor, Li Wenliang. He posted on a chat group with his former university classmates, that people had been coming into his university with what he thought was the SARS virus.

VOICEOVER (starts in Chinese, then in English): 7 SARS cases were confirmed in the Huanan seafood market. The main mode of transmission of the virus is droplet transmission at close range or contact with respiratory secretions of patients. This can cause a special pneumonia that is evidently contagious and capable of affecting multiple organ systems. It is also called SARS. The patients were isolated in the emergency department of our hospital. Everyone please be careful.

VOICEOVER: That's scary. SARS is back?

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: The outbreak revived the spectre of SARS, another type of coronavirus which killed 774 people in 2002 and 2003.

PROFESSOR SHARON LEWIN, DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: The reason why they would have been so concerned at the prospect is this was SARS, was threefold. First of all, SARS was super infectious. Second, it had a relatively high mortality rate of 10%. And third, a large number of healthcare workers actually died from SARS because of the complexity with stopping transmission and I think that was the real concern.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: On the same day as Dr Li's warning, the Wuhan Health Commission sends an urgent internal notice to hospitals on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause.

VOICEOVER (starts in Chinese, then in English): Some medical institutions in our city have seen patients steadily with pneumonia of unknown cause. If you find patients with unexplained pneumonia, actively adjust the resources and treat them on the spot.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: The notice warns them to keep the outbreak quiet.

VOICEOVER: Without authorisation, no units or individuals shall release treatment related information to the outside.

DR WU QIANG, CHINESE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I have no doubt that local governments have reported the situation to the central government. So local governments were not accountable to the people at that time, but to the central government. They adopted a policy of concealing the truth from the public but starting to control the epidemic internally. This contradiction prevented them from properly mobilizing to deal with the spread of the epidemic.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Dr Li and the other doctors continue to share information.

VOICEOVER: Be careful. The WeChat group of our class has been banned. The latest news is the coronavirus infection has been confirmed, and virus classification is in progress. Please don't spread the word and ask your family and loved ones to take precautions.

VOICEOVER: Do not go to the Huanan seafood market in the near future.

RICHARD MCGREGOR, EAST ASIA SENIOR FELLOW, LOWY INSTITUTE: So when this group of doctors, I think they were university classmates from Wuhan, began sharing the information they had about a strange new virus on this joint WeChat [03:39:20] group, they were doing what you'd expect medical professions to do. To try and sort of pool information and see what was actually happening. But of course that's a kind of dangerous thing to do in China. I think there's little doubt right now that local officials in Wuhan did withhold information. They've admitted as much. The doctors in Wuhan who were talking about it, were explicitly told to shut up.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Dr Li and his colleagues are hauled in for questioning by Wuhan police.

VOICEOVER: After investigation and verification by the public security organs, eight offenders have been summoned and handled according to law. The police will investigate and punish with zero tolerance those illegal acts that fabricate and spread rumours and disrupt social order.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: Doctor Li was disciplined by his own hospital. He was even picked up by the police and taken in, and castigated and told not to spread rumours. This is what happens when you are saying things publicly that the Communist Party doesn't like. You're spreading rumours. Even if somebody is trying to tell the world about a potentially dangerous virus, the first instinct is to shut them up.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Despite the risk of retribution, critics like Dr Wu Qiang, who already lost his university job for defying a ban by President Xi on teaching democracy, continue to speak out over the government's handling of the crisis.

DR WU QIANG, CHINESE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They were basically concealing the truth; although internal controls were in place, the information kept from the public caused the outbreak of the disaster and the spread of the disease.

RICHARD MCGREGOR, EAST ASIA SENIOR FELLOW, LOWY INSTITUTE: That's the key point in this saga. They lost about two weeks, maybe three weeks, just when the virus was at it's sort of nascent point, just at a time where they could have traced it, just at a time where perhaps they could have checked it more substantially. But that was lost because it got caught up in the politics of the information flow and information surveillance in China.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Four weeks after the first infections, China notifies the World Health Organisation of the outbreak. Things are about to get worse. In early January, millions of Chinese are preparing to travel to and from Wuhan to celebrate Chinese New Year with their families.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: If you were to pick the most dangerous time, the worst time, for a virus to break out here, the, the worst time for it to spread quickly across China and even around the world, it would be the lunar new year. You have hundreds of millions of people criss-crossing China, travelling overseas. And because of that mass migration, the largest mass migration annually in the world, I mean, it, it was just a terrible time for this virus outbreak to, to happen.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Australian resident Ying Wang who lives in Melbourne, is preparing to visit Wuhan with her husband and two children when she hears about the outbreak.

YING WANG: It was a couple of days after our Christmas holiday in Melbourne, I got a video sent over from my cousin and according to the video there was a suspected SARS-like pneumonia and I asked my cousin 'should cancel my trip? We waited until probably um the first week in January and then there was an official announcement from our local government back in Wuhan saying um that the disease was controllable and then we sort of, I feel relieved, so we went, err... on... err, we went on with our trip.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Ying Wang and her family arrive in Wuhan on January 9. That same day a 61-year-old man who had visited the seafood market becomes the first person to die of coronavirus. His death is kept quiet for two days.

DR WU QIANG, CHINESE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: During the most crucial time of the spread of disease in early Jan, Wuhan and Hubei were holding annual political meetings. As a result, the first death which occurred on January 9 was not announced until January 11. After January 11 the data on deaths and confirmed cases plateaued and the numbers had not changed at all. I believe that the local authorities concealed the truth from the public due to political concerns.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: On January 22, the government finally acknowledges the gravity of the situation at a press conference in Beijing.

LI BIN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HEALTH COMMISSION OF CHINA: The virus might mutate and the epidemic is at risk of spreading further. It is currently the Spring Festival travel rush season, when the mobility of the general public increases sharply, which has heightened the risk of epidemic transmission and the difficulty of prevention and control. We must not take it lightly and be highly vigilant.

NEWSREADER: Nine people have died and 440 people have contracted a mysterious coronavirus, as China works to stop it spreading during the lunar new year travel rush.

YING WANG: It was, um, 22nd, 22nd of January, that was the turning point. Was, um, Wednesday and just bad news started coming in. Uh, um, starting with the Chinese official news saying that, um, um, it's getting, getting much worse than, than they expected and then all of a sudden, I think it was the next day 23rd, I remember, I woke up quite late like 10:00 AM and suddenly, um, my, my dad just told me, oh, we can't go out now. We can't go out. We can't get out our apartment.

NEWSREADER: There's been a dramatic development this morning in the Chinese city of Wuhan which is the epicentre of an outbreak of a deadly new virus. All public transport, buses, trains, ferries and the airport have been shut down as authorities scramble to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: I mean, when the authorities decided to lock down that whole province of Hubei. That's like locking down the entire population of Italy and telling them you can't leave that province. It was really the moment when everybody knew, all right, this is a big problem.

PROFESSOR SHARON LEWIN, DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: When Wuhan went into lockdown, I think January the 23rd and then flights and greater lockdown measures across China. This is unprecedented in the history of modern medicine. We've never tried. We know that containment can work, but it's never really been done at this large scale.

YING WANG: The day, uh, I learned that Wuhan was in lockdown and, um, I, I felt quite shocked and I start immediately start worrying about food, food supply. And I had to stop everything on that day. Just started messaging everybody to find out is that really the official news. How, how serious is this announcement?

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: By late January, Wuhan's hospitals are struggling to cope, and medical staff are under intolerable pressure.

NURSE: I can't take it anymore! (Screams)

MALE HOSPITAL WORKER: We don't want to live anymore. Look at it yourselves. What on earth do you want to do? I don't want people, you take them away. Take away that one lying on the floor. Otherwise, you'd better kill me. Let me out of here, send me home. I'm not creating trouble. So many lying there, what can I do?

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: With patient numbers surging, construction begins on two new hospitals, with one scheduled to open in just over a week.

NEWSREADER: Even though Chinese authorities have shut down several cities, the world health organisation says it's not yet a global health emergency.

PROFESSOR RAINA MACINTYRE, HEAD, BIOSECURITY PROGRAM, UNSW KIRBY INSTITUTE: So, obviously the whole world was watching very closely through January as this epidemic unfolded, and people were very concerned. A lot of experts were concerned and felt that the Public Health Emergency of International Concern should have been declared earlier. I think people were harking back to Ebola and what happened there, and they were afraid of delays that might have been very costly in terms of the ability to save people's lives.

NEWSREADER: Australia's first case of coronavirus has been confirmed in Victoria, as New South Wales announces it has two probable cases.

DR MIKE CATTON, CO-DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: So, the minute we made the diagnosis of the first case in Australia, we knew how significant that was and we knew that we wanted to culture the virus.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: In a major breakthrough, Australian scientists become the first outside China to isolate the virus in a laboratory.

DR MIKE CATTON, CO-DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: Okay, it's definitely growing. It started at 30, so that's three long. So, a thousand times stronger. Awesome. So, it's definitely growing. So, we've got it. Fantastic. Yep.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: CSIRO scientists begin growing the virus in their highest security laboratory, reserved for the most deadly pathogens.

PROFESSOR TREVOR DREW, DIRECTOR, CSIRO AUSTRALIAN ANIMAL HEALTH LABORATORY: We don't actually know how dangerous this virus is. We know it kills people, but we don't know how many, and we don't know exactly what the mechanism is by which this virus kills people. So at the moment we're taking the highest level of precautions.

DR ROB GRENFELL, DIRECTOR OF HEALTH AND BIOSECURITY, CSIRO: Our staff can only usually work about four hours in those suits and in those conditions, because it's very stressful to imagine you're actually working with such high volatile agents.

PROFESSOR TREVOR DREW, DIRECTOR, CSIRO AUSTRALIAN ANIMAL HEALTH LABORATORY: So the most important thing that we're doing at the moment is growing the virus to produce more of it so that we can understand more about the characteristics of this virus, and also how it behaves in a biological model so that we can see the progress of the disease.

DR ROB GRENFELL, DIRECTOR OF HEALTH AND BIOSECURITY, CSIRO: So, we will then introduce the virus into our test animals, on this occasion ferrets, because their respiratory system is very similar to humans. And the idea here is to understand how that infection progresses and how it behaves. This is very important for us to um, understand because if we can't, uh, understand how the infection progresses and in which way it progresses we can't understand how vaccines work.

SCIENTIST: So, I think this will be ready to harvest tomorrow.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: In China, the escalating number of infections prompts a rare outburst of anger online against authorities.

WUHAN RESIDENT: I want to fucking ask, can you find another country on this planet that is such fucking bullshit? Can you find another country on this planet, another government to fuck shit up like this? Wuhan is like fucking hell right now. To see them just drop dead or all kinds of scenarios, all those tragedies. Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year. It should have been a happy time. Can you say that the Wuhan people or Chinese people feel happy now?

DR WU QIANG, CHINESE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It can be said that the more than 900 million Chinese citizens who are equipped with smart phones have been extremely dissatisfied with the situation of Wuhan pneumonia in the past one month or so. From my own observation, this level of dissatisfaction is unprecedented in the past eight years. They have been tremendously dissatisfied with Wuhan local government's ineffectiveness in epidemic and disaster relief, the predicament the Wuhan people have been put into from the city lockdown, the paralysis of the local medical institutions, and the huge risk they have to face.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: As authorities desperately try to stop the virus spreading, Wuhan is effectively cut off from the rest of China.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: We decided to go into Hubei province to have a look what it was like, right inside the virus hot zone. As we got closer and closer to Hubei, the road blocks were becoming more serious. As we got closer to Hubei, the road blocks were becoming more serious, and in fact looked like something out of an apocalyptic movie. The police are making all the cars pull over to the side.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: So basically, that's the border that way. The police have told us that we can drive in but we can't drive out.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: We drove through a series of ghost towns. I mean, nobody on the streets, shops closed, the shutters were down. And this is during Spring festival. Normally this is a time when you'd have fireworks, families, friends gathering to have meals together, celebrating, being happy, and instead it was completely dead, and in fact, pretty eerie.

NEWSREADER: The outbreak of the coronavirus in china has finally been declared a global health emergency after a rapid escalation in the number of infections during the past week. There are almost 8,000 cases in 18 countries, including 9 in Australia.

STEPHEN MCDONELL, BBC CHINA CORRESPONDENT: So here I am, sitting at home and reporting from where I live. That's because after returning from Hubei province at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak, everybody's told you need to go into quarantine, you can't be exposed to others for several weeks. This city, Beijing, if I look out the window, it's dead. I mean, there are hardly any people in the streets. Friends here don't want to go outdoors. That's because they're afraid of catching the coronavirus, and the same is happening all over the countries, all these mega-cities in China.

NEWSREADER: The government is taking drastic action to stem the coronavirus. Foreign nationals coming from China are now banned from entering the country.

PROFESSOR RAINA MACINTYRE, HEAD, BIOSECURITY PROGRAM, UNSW KIRBY INSTITUTE: I think from a disease control point of view, we want to continue these for as long as is feasible. There's just so many major economic consequences of the travel ban that I think at some point we'll have to make the decision to lift the bans, but if we can keep them going as long as possible, that will be beneficial from a disease control point of view.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Hundreds of Australians remain trapped in Hubei province.

YING WANG: So, this is the view from my window, and it's been really good weather today, but we're not going out. And this is our central garden on level six. So, it's a bit shame that we're stuck at home, otherwise it could been a really good day out.

YING WANG: I really just want a more firm answer from anywhere really, from WHO or, or, or my local government. So how, how bad really is? I- I'm still having this question. How serious is this whole pandemic? Even though everyday we watch the numbers, infected number of people, uh, also the death toll keep going up. Wh- just, yeah, I- I need to, I don't know, I need someone to assure me this is some ... I don't know, I feel like the end of the world.

TIM MCLEAN: Morning folks. It's Thursday 6th February. Middle of a ghost town here. Everyone is hiding. 1.3 million people all hiding. It's raining, it's a miserable day. Death toll is, what, 545 today. Um, 16,800-odd people in hospital in my district. Waiting on DFAT to give us an answer about when I can get out of here.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Australian Tim McLean is stranded on the outskirts of Wuhan. He's trying to get his Chinese partner a visa to come to Australia.

TIM MCLEAN: Um, Foreign Affairs just contacted me. I just hung up the phone. Um, they just confirmed and- and wanted to let me know that, uh, my- my spouse Xu Qiong didn't make the list for the flight with Qantas, and asked me if I was still, um, interested in leaving. Um, I informed them that I'm not leaving without her. It's dire here. It's very dire. There's queues outside the hospitals now. We're not allowed near them. There's people dropping on the footpath, literally. Okay? Um, I know how bad it is. Um, I can't wait to get out of here. It's- it's terrible.

TIM MCLEAN: So, this is them spraying outside our front door, they have been doing this through the city regularly, I better go in and shut the door. The local council have been going out and- and spraying disinfectant around everybody's doorways. So I suspect they're spraying to stop, uh, infections coming out of the sewer. I better go in and shut the door. I've seen medical folks turn up two doors away from me, 20 metres from my front door, and take a lady away that was infected. They also took her son. The son, um, returned home 24 hours later; he was okay. Uh, we haven't seen or heard of the lady since.

PROFESSOR RAINA MACINTYRE, HEAD, BIOSECURITY PROGRAM, UNSW KIRBY INSTITUTE: So, people have been concerned about the human rights aspects of quarantine and, um, isolation of cases, quarantine of context, et cetera, and that's been happening on a very large scale in China but also in Australia and other countries. From a disease control point of view, putting aside other issues, from a disease control point of view it works.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Videos emerge on social media of authorities using increasingly drastic measures.

RESIDENT (in Mandarin): Forced quarantine. The whole family of four. Go. Hurry up. Leave. No filming allowed. Go. What are you doing? Can you leave me alone? Het in there. No.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Around China, residents post scenes claiming officials are welding the doors of apartment buildings shut so people can't get out.

Woman (in Mandarin): Hey look, is that the door? They are welding the door. That's a door in the middle, look. Terrible. They are welding the door, not allowing people to get out. Next will be our block, Block 6.

TIM MCLEAN: I'm very concerned about getting this virus. I'm not even 100 metres away from one of the hospitals that's full. Um, I've seen people entering that hospital. I've seen, um, people getting rolled out on stretchers out of that hospital. It's literally across the road from where I come out of that apartment. Now, that's concerning. My hospitals here are full. Uh, we've run out of medical supplies here. There's no, um, PPE, or personal protective equipment available anymore, so the doctors have all gone to the bigger hospitals. They're shipping our sick and our, um, you know, the people that are in bad condition, they're taking them to Wuhan. The Wuhan hospitals are also full now.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: By early February the virus is in 25 countries, with 216 cases outside China.

PROFESSOR TREVOR DREW, DIRECTOR, CSIRO AUSTRALIAN ANIMAL HEALTH LABORATORY: The most likely way that the virus is traveling outside of China is by infected people. So these people, they are perhaps in the early stages of the disease and perhaps not showing very many clinical signs. So, they are able to get onto planes and they're quite happy to travel, and in all innocence they are spreading the disease as they travel.

PROFESSOR NEIL FERGUSON, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON: We think 10% or less of all infections in china are being detected at the current time. We estimate that up to 50,000 new infections a day occur in China, which is obviously much larger than the official case numbers.

NEWSREADER: Almost 4,000 passengers, including more than 200 Australians, have spent their first 24 hours officially in quarantine on board a cruise ship off Japan. They'll be isolated on board for the next fortnight, with some passengers growing anxious as their crucial medicines are beginning to run out.

PROFESSOR RAINA MACINTYRE, HEAD, BIOSECURITY PROGRAM, UNSW KIRBY INSTITUTE: We know that cruise ships are at high risk for outbreaks. It's well documented that you get outbreaks of influenza, norovirus, gastro and so on, on cruise ships. They are closed small communities in a very small space compared to, say, a country. So obviously you can get more intense transmission once an outbreak starts.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Shocking news breaks that the man who had first warned of the outbreak has died of coronavirus.

NEWSREADER: In China, censors are working overtime to contain an outpouring of anger and grief over the death of the doctor who blew the whistle on the coronavirus crisis. Li Wenliang died from the virus in a Wuhan hospital five weeks after being punished by authorities for warning others of a dangerous new virus.

RICHARD MCGREGOR, EAST ASIA SENIOR FELLOW, LOWY INSTITUTE: There was a huge outpouring of grief, anger, frustration, on Chinese social media. And not just from so-called netizens on Chinese-style Reddit forums or something, but from the Supreme Court of China who put out a statement saying that, you know, these doctors were heroes, they should have been allowed to do their job.

DR WU QIANG, CHINESE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The public intellectuals and the public both realised that Dr Li represents the conscience of China. He was suppressed from the beginning from telling the truth. He could have saved the livelihood of tens of thousands of people, or thousands of people's lives. But all this was concealed due to the authority's suppression of free speech. I believe the public expressed their dissatisfaction with the government by commemorating him.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: The death toll reaches a critical milestone ... overtaking the numbers killed by SARS.

HOSPITAL WORKER (in Mandarin): How can we take any more patients in here? What else can we do? I don't know what you can do. What about these patients lying here? Many patients are lying on the ground. It is full here.

Woman (in Mandarin): Three bodies have been lying here all morning. Some of them died in the middle of the night. But until now, nobody has come to handle it. Doctors and nurses are all working under these conditions.

WUHAN HOSPITAL WORKER (in Mandarin): Okay you have seen him, just keep going.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: After being conspicuously absent, president Xi emerges on state media to assert his authority.

XI JINPING, CHINESE PRESIDENT: Ni Hao! Let's not shake hands in this special time. But we must have confidence that we will overcome this crisis.

RICHARD MCGREGOR, EAST ASIA SENIOR FELLOW, LOWY INSTITUTE: Xi has really lost control of the narrative, and he's struggling to get it back. Now if that goes on, if they don't get on top of the virus, then that can really damage his image I think, even with ordinary Chinese people, and that has potentially profound implications, because two, three years down the track, when he's meant to be reappointed, maybe his enemies will use this against him.

DR WU QIANG, CHINESE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So, the people directed this kind of dissatisfaction directly to Xi himself and Xi's style of governance which is I believe the most serious threat to Xi Jinping. This is because the foundation of his power is based largely on populism and the loss of this populist foundation will undoubtedly destabilise his position in the party.

NEWSREADER: Australians still trapped in the coronavirus epicentre are tonight preparing for a second attempt at an evacuation flight to Darwin.

TIM MCLEAN: There is a seat available for my partner Qiong and myself on the next available flight out of Wuhan, which apparently is leaving at midnight tonight. Uh, we've got three or four hours to get to the airport. Uh, they've sent us- sent us all our passes, et cetera, so we can get through the checkpoints. Um, it's all confirmed. We've got the emails. We've got the thumbs up. So, we're out of here. We're heading home. Can't wait. And, uh, super excited.

YING WANG: So, today's our last day in Wuhan. It's been a pretty long journey the past two weeks. More than two weeks we've been quarantined for more than two weeks. So, tomorrow we're going to get out and go to the airport and come back to Australia. So, it's still, it's still unreal for me.

YING WANG: Reaching the airport toll gate, looks like we are in the checkpoint. It's 2.30, kids are not asleep. I'm super tired. We're still waiting. About half of the plane still waiting to be cleared of security and passport control and stuff. A lot of paperwork, a lot of screening, a lot of questions. Just very, very stressful really. Let's go out of here! Yes, we're out of here, going home.

SEAN NICHOLLS, REPORTER: Tim McLean isn't on the flight. Quarantine restrictions mean he hasn't been able to get any transport to the airport. So, he's still stuck in Hubei province.

TIM MCLEAN: I'm absolutely fucking petrified now. 1300 odd people are dead here. The police are actually knocking on doors and taking temperatures and if they have a temperature, they're dragging them out, mate. You don't get a fucking say in it. You don't get an option. You get taken away and put with a bunch of other sick people. Not only are we in quarantine but it's beyond quarantine now. It's... I don't even know what to call it. It's quite terrifying knowing that people can knock on your door and drag you out for no reason at all, because you've got a temperature.

PROFESSOR SHARON LEWIN, DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: At the moment we don't have a good understanding of the real mortality rate for the novel coronavirus. It's estimated about 2 per cent. So if the mortality rate is 2%, if it's 1%, even if it's 0.5% and 300 million people get infected, that's a lot of people that could potentially die. Because if you think back into the Spanish flu, enormous numbers of people died, but the actual mortality rate was less than 1% but a huge number of people were infected.

WOMAN: Help! My mother is dying! Someone come quickly! I have no way out! There is really no way out! Everyone, please help me! I have no other way!

NEWSREADER: The world health organisation is this morning warning that the coronavirus could pose a greater global threat than terrorism.

DR TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, DIRECTOR-GENERAL, WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION: A virus can have more powerful consequences than any terrorist action. And that's true. And if the world doesn't want to wake up and consider this enemy virus as public enemy number one, I don't think we will learn from our lessons.

PROFESSOR TREVOR DREW, DIRECTOR, CSIRO AUSTRALIAN ANIMAL HEALTH LABORATORY: We just don't know how this outbreak is going to develop, or how many people are ultimately going to be infected, or ultimately going to die from this disease. We don't yet know exactly how the virus is evolving. We don't know, uh, how many people are actually infected that are not revealed to be infected. And we don't know how many people are dying that are misdiagnosed as dying from other, other disease. So, this is a real problem for us to be able to make any real prediction, or to model the spread of this disease.

PROFESSOR SHARON LEWIN, DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: I think the worst case scenario is that we are unable to contain the virus, that we see sustained human-to-human transmission in many parts of the world.

NEWSREADER: The World Health Organisation says the window of opportunity to contain the coronavirus outbreak is narrowing. The statement comes as concerns grow in South Korea and the Middle East about the number of cases. There have also been more cases confirmed among Australians evacuated from a cruise ship in Japan.

TIM MCLEAN: So, I really don't know what the near future is going to bring. We've got no information about how long we're going to be in here. There's no indication whatsoever. I've got sick people living next door to me, I've got sick people above me, I've got sick people across the lane from me. Some of those people have got chains on their doors so people can't access them because they're ill. I'm hiding from a virus that you can't see and a government that you don't want to muck around with.