Source:
https://scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3105672/coronavirus-two-health-officials-china-stood-down-after-cluster People & Culture
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
A health worker takes a swab sample from a resident during a Covid-19 testing regime in Shibei District of Qingdao, in eastern Shandong Province on October 14. Photo: Xinhua
Two officials in the eastern Chinese port city of Qingdao have been punished after a cluster of 12 coronavirus cases was found in a hospital, triggering the city to test all its 10 million residents.
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.
Of the Covid-19 patients in Qingdao, three were seriously ill, the local health authority said. The Qingdao Chest Hospital has been closed following the outbreak.
The source of the infection and how it was transmitted are not known.
Xue Qingguo, another deputy mayor of Qingdao, said on Wednesday that the local government would employ gene sequencing technology to speed up the tracing of the coronavirus.
“Regarding the tracing result, please don’t be anxious. I believe [the transmission route] will become clear soon,” Xue said. “All cases were linked with the chest hospital, this is clear.”
Jiang Fachun, vice-director of the Qingdao Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told state news agency Xinhua that as more evidence was collected, the centre expected to rule out the possibility of community infections.
In addition to the hospital cluster, Qingdao Port reported a new symptomatic coronavirus case on Wednesday. A 40-year-old worker at the port was put under quarantine late last month when he and a colleague tested positive for the virus in a routine health check-up after a night shift unpacking imported frozen food but neither was showing symptoms at the time.
The authority also found 51 frozen products and environmental samples collected from two Russian ships at the port tested positive for the coronavirus.
At the end of last month, about 200,000 port workers and residents joined the coronavirus testing programme and all returned negative results.
Xu Hejian, spokesman for Beijing’s municipal government, asked Qingdao residents not to go to the capital city unless “in necessary circumstances”.
People from Qingdao must present negative nucleic acid test results issued within the last seven days before they entered Beijing, Xu said on Wednesday.