16 officials punished for pandemic control lapses

Sixteen officials from Jilin province have been punished for failing to perform their duties adequately during its ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the provincial disciplinary authority said on Thursday.

Five of the officials were removed from their posts, including Gao Yutang, head of the health commission in Changchun, the provincial capital, and Zhai Yanhui, principal of No 1 Middle School in the city's Jiutai district, the authority said in a news release issued on Thursday.

By not attaching adequate importance to pandemic prevention and control, Gao failed to lead the commission to take sufficient precautionary measures, it said, adding that it also failed to coordinate and dispatch resources in an orderly manner or offer necessary guidance for pandemic control work.

Due to his failure to roll out timely quarantine measures as required by pandemic prevention and control regulations, Zhai was to blame for transmission of the virus at his school.

Four of those punished were traffic police officers. Even though some drivers didn't offer proof of negative nucleic acid tests for COVID-19, a prerequisite for leaving Changchun, the four officers let them depart, causing the outbreak to spread, it said.

Five of the officials punished were from Jilin city. They included Yang Weiguang, head of its education bureau, who failed to carry out adequate emergency response measures and was to blame for the widespread transmission of COVID-19 at schools. He was given a severe Party warning.

Ye Beimou, head of the village committee in Cuijiatun, in the city's Longtan district, was also given a severe Party warning.

Ye didn't report information to higher levels of government about villagers returning from the city's urban areas and quarantine them in a timely manner as required, according to the disciplinary authority.

Close to 95 percent of COVID-19 cases in the recent resurgence of infections in Jilin province are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, local authorities said Thursday.

The conditions of the vast majority of patients with mild or moderate symptoms have improved after treatment, Yang Junling, a specialist in respiratory and critical care medicine, told a news conference on Thursday, adding that very few of them have progressed to severe or critically ill cases.

"Most of the patients in severe condition have complications resulting from existing health conditions," she said, noting that those conditions are also being treated. "Few patients with mild symptoms get worse."

The province reported 742 confirmed locally transmitted COVID-19 cases and 415 local asymptomatic carriers on Wednesday.

The construction of eight makeshift hospitals, with 11,488 beds, was completed by Wednesday, and two temporary quarantine facilities boasting 662 isolation rooms have been established.