Party officials sacked in Inner Mongolia as local Covid-19 outbreak continues
- The northern Chinese region again accounts for half of the country’s new symptomatic cases
- Wuhan, the pandemic’s initial epicentre, also reports new cases, which are said to be linked to a company’s staff training session
The ongoing outbreak prompted the dismissal of Wang Zhiqiang as secretary of the party committee of the disease control and prevention centre in Hohhot. He Lingling and Wen Yan, respectively deputy heads of the Hohhot districts of Tumut Zuoqi and Saihan, were also removed from their posts.
The northern region accounted for nearly half of the 85 local symptomatic cases that were announced nationally on Thursday. The authorities also announced 24 local asymptomatic cases and 189 imported cases, of which 101 were symptomatic.
Of Inner Mongolia’s 40 symptomatic cases, Hohhot, the region’s capital, accounted for 37, in a repeat of Wednesday, when Inner Mongolia – mostly in Hohhot – had also made up half of the national symptomatic case count.
As of Thursday, Hohhot had reported a total of 260 local symptomatic cases in its latest outbreak, and identified almost 15,000 people classed as close or secondary contacts.
Meanwhile, the central city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in December 2019, reported 10 symptomatic cases on Thursday, after having five on Wednesday and four on Tuesday.
Local authorities said on Wednesday that they had so far tested more than 700,000 residents deemed to have been potentially exposed to the virus.
The outbreak has been linked to a staff training session held by a cosmetics marketing company. Infections traced to the session were detected not only in Wuhan but in other provinces and cities, including Beijing and Shijiazhuang in the north and Qingdao on the coast.
The southern province of Guangdong reported eight new local cases – all in Shenzhen, which shares a border with Hong Kong – and 44 imported infections, of which 38 had arrived from Hong Kong.
Beijing, which will host the Winter Paralympics from March 4 to 13, reported two local cases, in its central Xicheng district. Like the Olympics, the Paralympics will be held in a “closed loop”.
