Coronavirus Live Updates: Taiwan Reports First Death; U.S. Ship Passenger Tests Positive

That new account risks drawing the president, China’s most powerful leader in decades, directly into questions about whether top officials did too little, too late.

In the newly released internal speech that Mr. Xi delivered on Feb. 3, when the epidemic had already spiraled into a national crisis, the Chinese president said he had “issued demands about the efforts to prevent and control” the coronavirus on Jan. 7, during a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest council of the Communist Party, whose sessions are typically very secretive.

In the speech, he also said he had authorized the unprecedented lockdown of Wuhan and other cities beginning on Jan. 23.

“I have at every moment monitored the spread of the epidemic and progress in efforts to curtail it, constantly issuing oral orders and also instructions,” Mr. Xi said of his more recent involvement.

Mr. Xi’s advisers may have hoped that publishing the speech would dispel speculation about his recent retreat from public view and reassure his people that he can be trusted to lead them out of the epidemic.

But the speech could expose Mr. Xi to criticism that he didn’t treat the initial threat urgently enough, and make it difficult for him to shift blame onto local officials.

In early January, leaders in Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of the outbreak, were giving open assurances that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.