in China keeps rising.

And while the deadly virus spreads,

public anger is building.

So far, this has mostly been directed at officials in Wuhan,

the city at the centre of the outbreak.

Their shortcomings in dealing with the virus

were confirmed by Zhou Xianwang, mayor

of the city, who confessed this week that authorities

had failed to make timely disclosures.

In fact, it took six weeks since the first reported case

of the pneumonia in early December

before the Wuhan government decided

to sound a general alarm.

The delay has prompted several thousands of angry people

on social media in China to accuse

the mayor of neglecting his city,

and call for him to step down.

Such outbursts of public dissent are rare in China,

particularly during the rule of Xi Jinping,

China's authoritarian leader.

But rarer still are public displays

of disunity among the different levels of the Communist party

hierarchy.

But this is exactly what's happening this time.

Even as the mayor of Wuhan offered to resign and face

what he called the infamy of history,

he also laid responsibility for the slow reaction

to the virus at the door of the central government.

He appealed to people to understand

why Wuhan had failed to make timely disclosures

about the severity of the virus.

This was due, he said, to the fact

that the city had to wait for authorisation

to raise the alarm from Beijing.

Such authorisation took weeks to come.

All this is stirring dark memories

of China's last great pneumonia scourge.

The Sars outbreak of 2003, which eventually

killed some 800 people in 17 countries around the world.

That crisis was also worsened by cover-ups and underreporting

that lasted months.

The fallout from Sars rocked the Chinese government,

and resulted in the firing of the minister of health

and the mayor of Beijing.

The current signs of disunity within Chinese officialdom

hint at the intense pressures that arise during public health

crises.

As food prices surge, factories shut or go slow,

and cities all over the country restrict the movement

of people, there is no doubt that the coronavirus outbreak

ranks as the biggest crisis that Mr Xi has had to face

since he took power in 2012.