I don't think you follow the news there. Just because you've only heard it yesterday doesn't make it new. The neighbouring countries have been on guard on the issue. There have been lots of news, leaks and complaints on this issue for the past several weeks. In fact the wet market in Wuhan had been officially "closed" for at least 3 weeks due to the disease. That means the pandemic has been spreading far longer than that.
Now they suddenly started to release updated numbers (due to pressure from their neighbouring countries) and you think it'd only "escalated in a week".
I have been following the issue since start of this month from Chinese media, where is the covering up?
Where is due to the pressure part? At first there had not been showing enough evidence of the virus's capacity to spread from human to human, which only confirmed recently because the medical staff gets infected and 2 cases in Guangdong, so the alert level is much lower than it is now.
You can blame the Chinese authority for not fully predicting the severity of the situation, but intentionally covering stuff up is a different accusation you better have strong evidence to support that.
Now they suddenly started to release updated numbers (due to pressure from their neighbouring countries) and you think it'd only "escalated in a week".
Some people have some weird imagination
* http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202001/01/WS5e0c6a49a310cf3e3...