Coronavirus: China punishes two health officials over hospital cluster
- Nearly 10 million people were tested in Qingdao in rapid response to new batch of cases
- Deputy mayor says gene sequencing technology will speed up tracing the route of transmission
Six people had confirmed cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and another six were asymptomatic positive cases, all linked with the Qingdao Chest Hospital.
The local government said on Thursday that Sui Zhenhua, Communist Party secretary and director of the municipal health commission, had been suspended and Yang Xixiang, a vice-director at the municipal party’s organisation department, would replace him.
In addition, Deng Kai, president of the hospital, was sacked. Both Sui and Deng will face further investigations.
By Thursday early morning, 9.95 million residents had been tested for the coronavirus after Qingdao launched citywide testing on Sunday, deputy mayor Luan Xin said. Of those, 7.6 million tests returned negative while the rest are still being processed. None had so far come back positive.
The cluster of cases was detected when two hospital inpatients tested positive on Saturday and a woman – who works as a carer at the hospital and is also the wife of one of the two positive patients – was also found to be positive for the virus.
The hospital then tested about 400 patients, family members and carers. Nine people had contracted the virus, with four of those showing symptoms and five who did not.