China fires 2 health officials following new virus outbreak

BEIJING (AP) – A hospital chairman and director of a health commission in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao have been fired following the latest outbreak of the corona virus in China, officials said Thursday.

A brief announcement Thursday on Qingdao City Government’s official microblogging linked the cases to Director of the Health Commission Xu Jinhua and Deng Gui, head of Qingdao’s Torasi Hospital. No other details were given.

After a total of 12 cases, including asymptomatic, were discovered over the weekend, authorities ordered an inspection of 9 million people in the city, which led to China’s first local outbreak in about two months.

Similar mass test campaigns have taken place since the previous eruptions. The trial began with “close contacts, close contacts of those contacts and more normal contacts,” gradually expanding to all districts of the city, according to Qingdao’s health department.

Qingdao is a major trading port and industrial hub known for electronics and the country’s most popular liquor and the home of the Chinese navy’s northern navy.

China, where the corona virus was first detected late last year, has largely eradicated the virus domestically, but is safe from imported cases and a second wave of domestic spread.

Qingdao announced on Wednesday that more than 8 million trials had been conducted, with no additional cases found in the nearly 5 million results.

On Thursday, the National Health Commission announced 11 new cases in the last 24 hours, 10 of which were imported. The other case listed as asymptomatic was discovered Sept. 24 and classified as a confirmed case.

Hospitals treated 240 people for COVID-19, and 392 were monitored in isolation for having a positive test without symptoms or for suspicious cases.

Of the 85,622 cases of the disease, China reported 4,634 deaths.