Lockdown city Xian suspends data chief over Covid-19 tracing app failures

Name: Senior officials in Xian dismissed from posts as city turns corner on Covid-19 outbreak
Uploaded: 2022-01-05T05:06:37.000Z
Duration: 1 min 46 s
Description: Senior officials in Xian dismissed from posts as city turns corner on Covid-19 outbreak

Dereliction of duty cited after malfunctions in health code app, which is needed for movement and to enter buildings

Fallout from the city’s outbreak continues after two officials were sacked and 26 placed under investigation over its handling

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Residents queue up for Covid-19 tests in Xian, which remained in lockdown. Photo: Xinhua

William Zheng

Published: 1:06pm, 5 Jan 2022Updated: 3:34pm, 5 Jan 2022

The Chinese city of Xian suspended its top official in charge of big data after the system powering the local health code app, a critical tool in China’s zero-Covid strategy, crashed for a second time.

Xian’s Communist Party committee announced on Wednesday morning that Liu Jun, director and party chief of the Xian Big Data Resources Administration, had been suspended for “dereliction of duty”.

The northwestern city in Shaanxi province has experienced one of China’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks since the pandemic’s early stages two years ago. A spread of cases that began in mid-December has prompted a full lockdown of the city and its 13 million residents for the past two weeks.

Across China, 41 new symptomatic local infections were reported by the National Health Commission on Wednesday, 35 of them in Xian and four in Henan. This was the lowest daily tally in Xian since December 19, and brought the city’s total number of symptomatic cases to 1,793.

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Senior officials in Xian dismissed from posts as city turns corner on Covid-19 outbreak

On top of widespread complaints from Xian residents about insufficient food and other essential supplies, the city’s mobile phone health code app has crashed twice in the past two weeks, disrupting contact tracing and testing. After the first breakdown, local officials apologised and promised to improve system maintenance.

Having a health code, which indicates a person’s Covid-19 status via an app, is compulsory in China and must be shown to enter venues or to travel. Cities and the rural areas they govern have their own unique codes.