Residents line up to take a nucleic acid test on Tuesday in Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Photo: VCG

Xi'an big data bureau head Liu Jun was suspended from duty for poor performance after the health code system crashed twice amid city-wide COVID-19 screening in the capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, the local authorities said on Wednesday.

Publicly available information shows that Liu was born in 1980, and became bureau chief in February 2019. Liu was in charge of many sectors including data standards and application, data resources as well as the health code system.

Another official Liu Xin was appointed as candidate for deputy chief of the bureau to preside over related works.

The system crashed twice as the city faces a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, which caused inconvenience for residents, triggering wide attention among Chinese netizens. 

At 9 am Tuesday, Xi'an started a new round of city-wide nucleic acid testing, but many local residents found that the health code system wasn't working. They needed to have their QR code scanned before they underwent nucleic acid testing. 

The big data bureau told the media that the traffic volume of the platform was too large. At around 10:30 am, the system started to work again.

On December 20, the system crashed for nearly a whole day. Many residents could not take public transport or receive a nucleic acid test because they needed to scan the QR code before conducting such activities.

Han Xia, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology went to Shaanxi and conducted an inspection on epidemic prevention and control work in the province from December 30 to 31. 

Han asked the working staff to improve the system to ensure no further crashes would occur after the health code system crashed on December 20. The health code system in Xi'an should strengthen technical improvement and network expansion to ensure safe and stable operation, Han noted.