More than 500 cases of COVID-19 have been detected in prisons across China, authorities said yesterday, prompting the sacking of a slew of officials.
China’s Hubei Province said that 271 cases were reported by its prisons on Thursday, including 220 that had previously not been known to provincial authorities.
Most of those cases were at the Wuhan Women’s Prison in the province’s capital, Chinese Bureau of Prison Administration Director He Ping (何平) told reporters.
Photo:AFP
The warden of Wuhan Women’s Prison was removed for failing to prevent the outbreak, the Hubei Daily reported.
Seven guards and 200 inmates also tested positive for the virus at Rencheng Prison in eastern Shandong Province, the Shandong Provincial Health Committee told a news conference.
Shandong Provincial Department of Justice Director Xie Weijun (解維俊) and seven other officials were sacked, officials said.
The new cases show that the “implementation of our prevention and control measures have not been effective,” Shandong Prison Administration Bureau Director Wu Lei (吳磊) said.
Another 34 cases were found at Shilifeng Prison in Zhejiang Province, leading to the ouster of its director and another official.
A policeman had “deliberately concealed” information about a visit to Wuhan in the middle of January and continued to work at the prison, Zhejiang Provincial Justice Department Deputy Directory Xu Xiaobo (徐曉波) said.
Yesterday, Hubei announced that 411 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in the province on Thursday, but later revised its figure to 631 to include the prison numbers.
IRAN
Iran yesterday confirmed 13 new COVID-19 cases, two of whom have died, with the outbreak there coming just as the country votes in a parliamentary election.
The majority of the cases in Iran have been in Qom, a Shiite Muslim holy city 120km south of Tehran.
The number of cases in Iran stands at 18, with four of those people having died.
Health officials on Thursday called for the suspension of all religious gatherings in Qom.
ITALY
Three people have tested positive in Italy for COVID-19, the northern Lombardy region said yesterday — the first known cases of local transmission of the illness.
Looking to contain the virus, officials urged residents to stay at home.
“Most of the contacts of those tested positive for coronavirus have been identified and subjected to the necessary tests and measures,” the region said in a statement.
Additional reporting by Reuters
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
RSS