Volunteers guide residents for nucleic acid testing in a residential community in Hohhot on Feb 21, 2022.Photo: IC

A senior official in Hohhot, capital of North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has been punished as the city failed to contain the latest outbreak of COVID-19, the region's top discipline watchdog announced on Wednesday. 

Wei Hongjun, a member of the Standing Committee of the Hohhot Municipal Committee and secretary of the Tumd Left Banner's Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), was given a severe warning within the party, according to a statement on Wednesday night from Inner Mongolia's Commission for Discipline Inspection. 

Since the latest round of the COVID-19 epidemic broke out in Hohhot, the Tumd Left Banner's Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has been carrying out ineffective deployment of epidemic prevention and control and has not instituted proper measures such as nucleic acid testing, according to the statement, which seriously affected the overall progress of the city's epidemic control. 

As of 2pm on Tuesday, Hohhot has reported 385 domestically transmitted cases of COVID-19 in the latest round of the outbreak. Ten rounds of mass nucleic acid tests have been carried out in the city. 

More than 100 officials have been punished nationwide for ineffective management or a slack response to local COVID-19 outbreaks in the past few months.