Photo: CFP

Tourist city Zhangjiajie in Central China's Hunan Province, which has become the latest hot spot of COVID-19 infections, punished 20 officials and public post holders for slack response in dealing with the epidemic flare-up. The list includes district officials, hospital management staff, and related personnel to the local performance show for tourists. The performance for tourists has caused a massive spread of the virus to at least eight provinces and regions across China. 

Some six officials from the city's Yongding district, where 15 confirmed cases have been reported as of Tuesday, were punished, including head of the district public health department Xu Xionghui, who has been removed from his post, Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported.

Xu was incompetent in supervising the implementation of epidemic prevention and control work of the district, and lacked effective and timely management in isolating infected patients, according to the official announcement. 

Deng Huabin, director of the emergency department at Zhangjiajie People's Hospital, who was in charge of the overall nucleic acid testing at the hospital, has also been removed from his post for slack management which led to a chaotic gathering of people at the testing site and posed serious risks of cross-infection in the hospital. 

Hunan reported 15 newly confirmed cases on Wednesday, three of which are from Zhangjiajie. Another three asymptomatic cases were also reported. 

Zhangjiajie ordered all residents and tourists not to leave the city and to cooperate with epidemic control measures amid the latest outbreak.

The Global Times learned from local residents that they are having a city-wide nucleic acid testing since July 29, and some key groups have been tested three times.

Virus sequences of the Zhangjiajie cases were found to be the same as the one discovered in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province, which is of the Delta variant. 

So far, patients related to the Zhangjiajie outbreak have been reported in eight provinces and regions including Beijing.

Global Times