Party chief removed after Chinese city hit by new coronavirus cluster
- Shulan in Jilin province is now the only place in the country classed as being high-risk for Covid-19
- Cluster of cases in city linked to police worker who had not left province or been in contact with anyone returning from overseas
A senior Communist Party official in a northeastern Chinese city has been removed from his post following a new cluster of coronavirus cases that threatens to spread to neighbouring cities.
More than 8,000 people in Jilin province have been placed in quarantine as a result of the outbreak that centres on Shulan.
The city is now the only area of the country classified as “high-risk”, but while the central government says local transmission is “on the whole” under control, new cases in Jilin, the neighbouring province of Heilongjiang and Hubei – the central province where the disease first emerged – remain a cause for concern.
On Friday the Jilin provincial party committee said that Shulan’s party chief Li Pengfei had been removed from his post and would be replaced by Zhang Jinghui, the deputy governor of Jilin city, which governs Shulan.
Five more officials were removed on Saturday, including the deputy head of the health commission and director of the disease control centre in Jilin as well as the health bureau director, public security bureau deputy party chief and disease control centre director in Shulan.