Beijing Sacks Officials After Fresh COVID-19 Outbreak In City Due To 59 New Positive Cases

Beijing’s municipal government has sacked a district chief and two other officials for not being able to prevent the fresh COVID-19 outbreak in the biggest wholesale food market of the Chinese capital, state media reported on Monday (15 June).

Deputy head of Fengtai district, Zhou Yuqing, was ousted from office for failing in his duty in prevention and control work, Efe news quoted the Beijing Daily as saying in a report.

Party secretary of Huaxiang town in Fengtai district, Wang Hua, and general manager of the Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market Company, Zhang Yuelin, have also been removed.

State-run Xinhua news agency said that tests on 76,499 people were conducted on Sunday in the Chinese capital, resulting in 59 testing positive.

Health authorities in the capital reported on Monday 36 new confirmed cases on Sunday, the day 79 people were still receiving medical treatment, while seven asymptomatic cases were under observation after the outbreak was detected.

While the majority of new cases in China in recent months have involved those who tested positive after returning home from abroad, at the end of last week local authorities reported new cases with no recent travel history outside of Beijing after two months of no infections in the capital.

The novel coronavirus is believed to have originated at a market that sold wildlife in Hubei province’s capital city of Wuhan last December.

On Monday the total active cases in China stood at 177 – two of them in critical condition – and some 83,181 cases have been reported in the country along with 4,634 deaths.

The fresh asymptomatic cases – which China does not count as confirmed – stood at 18, 11 of them imported. So far, there are 112 such cases under medical observation, of which 62 are people who came from outside the country.

(With inputs from IANS)