China Fires Senior Govt Officials As CoronaVirus Death Toll Exceeds 1,000

As the death passed 1,000,China has “removed” several senior officials from their jobs over their handling of the CoronaVirus outbreak

The party secretary for the Hubei Health Commission, and the head of the commission, were among those who lost their jobs.

They are the most senior officials to be demoted so far.

The deputy director of the local Red Cross was also removed for “dereliction of duty” over “handling of donations”.

The two Hubei party officials will be replaced by a national figure – the deputy director of China’s National Health Commission, Wang Hesheng.

On Monday, some 103 died in Hubei province alone, a daily record, and the national death toll is now 1,016.

But the number of new infections nationally was down almost 20% from the day before, from 3,062 to 2,478.

Hubei’s health commission confirmed 2,097 new cases in the province on Monday, down from 2,618 the previous day.

According to state media, there have been hundreds of sackings, investigations and warnings across Hubei and other provinces during the outbreak.

But removal from a certain role – while regarded as a censure – does not always mean the person will be sacked entirely, as it can also mean demotion.

As well as being removed from their posts, officials can also be punished by the ruling Communist Party.

For example, the deputy head of the Red Cross, Zhang Qin, was given “a serious intra-Party warning as well as a serious administrative demerit”, state media said.

Earlier this month, the deputy head of the Wuhan bureau of statistics was removed, also with a “serious intra-party warning a well as a serious administrative demerit for violating relevant regulations to distribute face masks”.

The head of the health commission of Huanggang, the second-worst hit city in Hubei after Wuhan, has also been removed.

In recent days, Chinese authorities have increasingly been criticised for their handling of the crisis.

The death of a doctor whose early warnings were suppressed by authorities sparked widespread public anger.

Beijing has sent a team from its highest anti-corruption agency to Hubei to investigate the treatment of Dr Li by police.

There are now more than 42,200 confirmed cases across China, in the country’s gravest public health crisis since the Sars outbreak in 2002-3.

The Hubei health commission said the province had a total of 31,728 cases with 974 deaths by the end of Monday – a fatality rate of 3%.

More than three-quarters of the deaths have been in Hubei’s provincial capital, Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak. The city of 11 million has been in lockdown for weeks.

In a rare public appearance amid the outbreak, China’s President Xi Jinping on Monday visited health staff in Beijing treating coronavirus patients.

He urged “more decisive measures” to combat the virus and said “we must have confidence that we will eventually win this battle against the epidemic”.

-BBC