International events that were supposed to be held in the country have been postponed, many districts are reimposing the country's iconic severe lockdowns and residents in outbreak areas are being tested in massive numbers.
Most of the outbreak reports are coming from the northeastern province of Liaoning. Local media reported that on Friday, May 14, the province of Liaoning had 14 new COVID-19 cases. The next day, there were 18 new cases. On Monday, May 17, the province reported four new locally transmitted cases.
Small outbreaks triggering harsh, authoritarian measures from local authorities
A majority of the cases were discovered in the city of Yingkou. Other cases were found in the provincial capital of Shenyang.
An outbreak has also been reported in the eastern province of Anhui over a thousand miles to the south of Liaoning. Here, five cases were confirmed in the provincial capital of Hefei and the neighboring city of Lu'an.
Dozens of asymptomatic cases have also been discovered, but China does not classify these as confirmed cases. Twenty-five were recorded on Friday and 19 on Saturday.
According to local reports, the outbreaks in Liaoning and Anhui are linked, as one outbreak has been traced to the employees of one company.
One employee of this company, known only by the name Li, had visited three other provinces and five different cities over a period of 18 days as part of his job. On May 13, when he got home to his residence in Hefei, he tested positive for COVID-19.
Local officials in Anhui and Liaoning have resorted to blaming each other for the outbreak.
The Anhui Provincial Office of Epidemic Prevention and Control issued a notice the day after notifying authorities that Li had been to Dalian, a city in Liaoning, and was in close contact with an infected individual. The Dalian Center for Disease Control and Prevention rejected this claim.
Both provinces have postponed large events, including the Dalian International Walking Festival, the Anhui Huangshan International Marathon and the Anhui International Tea Industry Expo.
The outbreaks in Anhui and Liaoning have also triggered local officials to initiate invasive contact tracing efforts, which led to them tracking down over 3,000 individuals quarantining and testing them against their will.
The Bayuquan district of Yingkou, where most cases originated, has been under lockdown since Friday. Several residential neighborhoods in Lu'an have also been placed under similarly repressive quarantines.
Entire neighborhoods in Yingkou and Lu'an have been raised to medium coronavirus risk. Thousands of residents in both cities are being tested for the coronavirus every day – sometimes, residents are forced out of their homes in the middle of the night to head to a testing center.
"They shouted in the middle of the night and knocked on doors from house to house to get us to do testing," said one Hefei resident during an interview with The Epoch Times. "Hundreds of personnel, including staff from the community offices and doctors, came to do the nucleic acid tests on us."
One video posted on Chinese social media showed that at 10:30 p.m. local time on May 14, residents of Bayuquan, including children and the elderly, were forced to wait in incredibly long lines without social distancing just to get tested. Yingkou officials claimed that they tested everybody in the city at least twice by Tuesday, May 17.
Additionally, the hotel in Yingkou where Li had stayed before he went home to Anhui, the Aiju Jinyang Hotel, has been converted into an isolation facility. It was forced to refuse any future bookings, and all of its hotel staff are being held there under quarantine.
CCP cracks down on local health officials for failure to contain outbreak
According to the CCP-owned newspaper China Daily, several officials and provincial doctors "have been held accountable" for a supposed "lack of vigilance" and "poor compliance "regarding the outbreak of the coronavirus in Anhui and Liaoning.
One doctor at a community health clinic in Lu'an who violated lockdown rules has been reprimanded for giving the coronavirus to his wife. Officials at one private hospital in the same city have also been reprimanded for supposedly failing to implement standard medical procedures regarding outbreaks, such as pre-examination and assessment protocols and proper isolation and testing procedures.
Both the community health clinic and the hospital have been shut down, and all health workers employed by both institutions have been suspended from practicing medicine for a year. Local authorities who were involved or may have looked the other way to let the supposed lapses occur have also been suspended or have been "required to reflect deeply on their mistakes."
In Liaoning, an investigation by the province's disease control task force has exposed "weak supervision and poor enforcement of treatment protocols."
Information from the task force found that one of the province's earliest cases was a patient who visited a private clinic in Bayuquan district complaining of a sore throat. The patient was never tested but was instead treated with an intravenous drip. The clinic also failed to report the person's symptoms to local health authorities.
The provincial government has shut down the clinic. The manager's license to practice medicine has been permanently revoked, and multiple officials and healthcare workers involved with the clinic have been given warnings.
Learn more about how China is lashing out at its own people for the supposed spread of the coronavirus within its own borders by reading the latest articles at Pandemic.news.
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