The disciplinary organ of Xi’an, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, announced on Tuesday that Li Qiang, former head of the Xi’an Medical Emergency Center, has been removed his from post and expelled from the Communist Party of China for afflicting a great negative impact on local COVID-19 prevention and control efforts, and putting public safety at great risk.  

Having investigated  Li’s disciplinary violations , it was found that as head of the emergency center shouldering the responsibility of saving lives, he ignored the public interest, poorly implemented the epidemic prevention and control tasks and caused an adverse political impact.

He is suspected of negligence of duty and bribery.

In times of emergency affecting the lives of the people, Li disregarded the reasonable demands of the masses, bringing significant risks and potential danger to the safety of the people, the announcement said. 

It added that Li has long been addicted to mobile games, and slacking off at work which left a bad influence on the city’s health system. 

“During the critical period of the epidemic prevention and control in Xi'an, Li’s work was seriously irresponsible, triggering several major incidents that sparked negative public opinion online and caused a bad social impact,” read the announcement. 

Li was also engaged in the embezzlement of public funds and used his power to benefit some enterprises and illegally accepted huge amounts of money and property in exchange.

In January this year, when Xi’an suffered a heavy blow from a wave of COVID-19, a number of incidents occurred that sparked public outrage. One of the tragedies happened to an expectant mother who suffered abdominal pains but was kept waiting outside of a hospital for two hours because her nucleic acid test had expired, which led to her miscarriage.

Another case was the delayed treatment of a heart attack patient which later caused his sudden death. 

Residents of Xi'an also reportedly faced difficulties to buy food and going to hospitals during the January flareup of the virus, media reported. 

In response, Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said that she felt heartbroken as she saw loopholes in the anti-epidemic work in Xi'an on the lack of treatment for local patients. The anti-epidemic work is to protect lives and health and there is no excuse for rejecting patients amid an epidemic.