Virus reaches 5 prisons, no deaths
Print Edition
FIVE Chinese prisons have reported novel coronavirus infections (COVID-19) but there had been no severe cases or deaths related to the illness as of Thursday, a justice official said yesterday.
The prisons are in the provinces of Hubei, Shandong and Zhejiang, He Ping, an official with the Bureau of Prison Administration under the Ministry of Justice, said at a press conference in Beijing. As a result, a number of officials have been sacked, he said.
He pledged all-out efforts to quarantine suspected cases and their close contacts and timely treatment for all confirmed to have been infected.
Prisons across the country were also ordered to step up monitoring track records of all prison guards and officers to prevent the spread of the virus into prison premises, he added.
In the eastern Shandong Province, a total of 207 infection cases have been confirmed in a prison, the provincial government said.
Local authorities have completed nucleic acid tests of all relevant personnel at Rencheng Prison in Jining City. Currently, effective isolation and treatment measures have been taken for all confirmed patients.
On February 12, a prison officer was isolated in a hospital after exhibiting symptoms such as coughing. He was diagnosed with novel coronavirus pneumonia the next day.
Authorities immediately put the prison under closed management and started health screenings and isolation work.
The Commission for the Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China Central Committee has sent a team to Shandong to launch a comprehensive investigation into the outbreak at Rencheng Prison.
Also, eight officials have been removed from their posts, including Xie Weijun, secretary of the Party committee of the provincial department of justice, who is also the Party secretary of the Provincial Prison Administration, and Liu Baoshan, director of Rencheng Prison.
In another case, 34 inmates were confirmed to have been infected with the novel coronavirus in a prison in Zhejiang, the provincial government said.
The Shilifeng Prison in Quzhou has been closed off, and every patient is receiving medical treatment, it added.
The provincial department of justice said an officer of the prison was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus on January 29. He had visited Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, from January 14 to 19, but he deliberately concealed the fact and went back to work after the trip. On January 31, some others in the prison were diagnosed with the infection.
The political commissar and the warden of the prison have been removed from office, and police have initiated an investigation into the prison officer.
Zhejiang’s prison administration has carried out a thorough investigation to trace those who have had close contact with the confirmed patients. All of them, together with the suspected patients, have been quarantined.
Badly hit Hubei, meanwhile, reported 631 new confirmed cases and 115 new deaths on Thursday, according to the provincial health commission yesterday.
The commission revised up the number of confirmed cases by 220. It said on Thursday night that it received written reports of 271 confirmed cases from the province’s prison system that is not connected to the infectious diseases online reporting system.
After further check and verification, it found 51 cases were counted in the earlier figure and the rest 220 cases were not counted. The three affected prisons also had 10 suspected cases.
After the revision, the total confirmed cases in the province had reached 62,662. Wuhan, the provincial capital, recorded a total of 45,346 confirmed cases.
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