Residents in Dalian, Liaoning Province, line to take nucleic acid tests on November 8, 2021. Photo: VCG

Some 15 executives, company staff and over 40 government officials were given serious punishment for their negligence of duty and breaking China's laws for improper gain that caused a new spike of COVID-19 in the port city of Dalian, in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, with 346 new local cases recorded in a month.   

According to a statement published by the Dalian government on Monday, local authorities found the flareup was caused by law-violating activities of a cold-chain food company.

Epidemiological investigation, serum antibody detection and cold-chain food sampling proved that the virus was imported through contaminated cold-chain food products. It first infected a worker at a cold storage of the Dalian Keqiang Food Company and then spread to other workers. The virus was then further transmitted to local communities. 

The latest flareup started from November 4. It was the third time that Dalian, one of China's largest port cities for imports of cold-chain aquatic products, has been hit hard by a cold-chain related outbreak. In less than 10 days, the city's tally reached 289, with 235 confirmed cases and 54 asymptomatic infections.

With a population of 7.45 million, the city has undertaken five rounds of city-wide nucleic acid testing of local residents. 

Executives and management staff at Dalian Keqiang Food Company, the first-stop designated cold storage, lacked management awareness, seriously violated the regulations on epidemic prevention and control of cold storages, which thus led to the outbreak of COVID-19, the statement said. 

Five employees from the company, including its head, were detained by the local authorities for suspected breach of the infectious disease prevention and control law. 

The Dalian Haiqing Aquatic Products Company, in its role as cold-chain food processing enterprise, failed to implement relevant epidemic prevention regulations in daily management and did not implement epidemic prevention instructions, which led to the occurrence of a cluster of epidemic cases within the company. The public security organ has taken criminal compulsory measures against the legal representative of the company and the general manager of the factory.

Moreover, four staff of a medical institute were also given criminal compulsory measures for faking nucleic acid testing records. Other four employees from a disinfection and quarantine treatment company were also under probe for dishonesty and negligence in duty. 

Apart from that, a total of 42 government officials involved in the case were also held accountable for disciplinary violations.