China Fires Health Officials after New COVID-19 Outbreak

Security personnel walk at a conference center in Qingdao, China. Reuters file photo
Security personnel walk at a conference center in Qingdao, China. Reuters file photo
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China Fires Health Officials after New COVID-19 Outbreak

Security personnel walk at a conference center in Qingdao, China. Reuters file photo
Security personnel walk at a conference center in Qingdao, China. Reuters file photo

A hospital president and the director of the health commission in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao have been fired after China’s latest coronavirus outbreak, authorities said Thursday.

A brief notice on the Qingdao city government’s official microblog Thursday said Health Commission Director Sui Zhenhua and Deng Kai, president of Qingdao’s thoracic hospital to which the cases have been linked, were placed under further investigation. No other details were given.

Authorities ordered testing of all 9 million people in the city after a total of 12 cases, including those not displaying symptoms, were discovered over the weekend, accounting for China’s first local transmissions in about two months.

Similar mass testing campaigns have taken place after previous outbreaks. Testing began with “close contacts, close contacts of those close contacts and more casual contacts,” gradually expanding to all districts of the city, Qingdao's health department said.

Qingdao is a major commercial harbor and industrial center known for electronics and the country’s most famous brewery, as well as the home of the Chinese navy’s northern fleet.

China, where coronavirus was first detected late last year, has largely eradicated the virus domestically but remains on guard against imported cases and a second wave of domestic transmission.

Qingdao on Wednesday reported more than 8 million tests have been conducted, with no additional cases discovered among the almost 5 million results returned.

On Thursday, the National Health Commission reported 11 new cases over the past 24 hours, 10 of them imported. The other case listed as asymptomatic was discovered Sept. 24 and had been recategorized as a confirmed case.

Hospitals were treating 240 people for COVID-19, with another 392 people being kept under observation in isolation for having tested positive without showing symptoms or for being suspected cases.
China has reported 4,634 deaths among 85,622 cases of the disease.



A Week after Catastrophic Earthquake, Focus Turns to a Growing Humanitarian Crisis in Myanmar

Rescue workers look on as heavy machinery clears the rubble at the site of an under-construction building collapse in Bangkok on March 30, 2025, two days after an earthquake struck central Myanmar and Thailand. (Photo by MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP)
Rescue workers look on as heavy machinery clears the rubble at the site of an under-construction building collapse in Bangkok on March 30, 2025, two days after an earthquake struck central Myanmar and Thailand. (Photo by MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP)
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A Week after Catastrophic Earthquake, Focus Turns to a Growing Humanitarian Crisis in Myanmar

Rescue workers look on as heavy machinery clears the rubble at the site of an under-construction building collapse in Bangkok on March 30, 2025, two days after an earthquake struck central Myanmar and Thailand. (Photo by MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP)
Rescue workers look on as heavy machinery clears the rubble at the site of an under-construction building collapse in Bangkok on March 30, 2025, two days after an earthquake struck central Myanmar and Thailand. (Photo by MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP)

Search teams pulled more bodies from the ruins of buildings on Friday, a week after a massive earthquake rocked Myanmar killing more than 3,100 people, as the focus turns toward the urgent humanitarian needs in a country that was already devastated by civil war.

United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, who is also the emergency relief coordinator, was to arrive Friday in an effort to spur action following the quake. Ahead of his visit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to the international community to immediately step up funding for quake victims "to match the scale of this crisis," and he urged unimpeded access to reach those in need.

"The earthquake has supercharged the suffering with the monsoon season just around the corner," he said Thursday.

Myanmar authorities said Thursday that 3,145 people had been killed, with another 4,589 people injured and 221 missing, and did not immediately update the figures on Friday.

Britain, which had already given $13 million to purchase emergency items like food, water and shelter, pledged an additional $6.5 million in funds to match an appeal from Myanmar's Disasters Emergency Committee, according to the UK Embassy in Yangon.

Many international search and rescue teams were also on the scene, and eight medical crews from China, Thailand, Japan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Russia were operating in Naypyitaw, according to Myanmar's military-run government. Another five teams from India, Russia, Laos and Nepal and Singapore were helping in the Mandalay region, while teams from Russia, Malaysia and the ASEAN bloc of nations were assisting in the Sagaing region.

The Trump administration has pledged $2 million in emergency aid and sent a three-person team to assess how best to respond given drastic cuts to US foreign assistance.

On Friday, five bodies were recovered from the rubble in the capital Naypyitaw and the second-largest city of Mandalay, near the epicenter of the 7.7 magnitude earthquake March 28, authorities said. The last reported rescue came Wednesday, some 125 hours after the quake struck, when a man was saved from the wreckage of a hotel in Mandalay.

The quake also shook neighboring Thailand, bringing down a high-rise under construction in Bangkok, where recovery work continued Friday. Overall, 22 people have been found dead and 35 injured in Bangkok, primarily from the construction site.

Myanmar´s military seized power in 2021 from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking what has turned into a civil war.

The quake worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis, with more than 3 million people displaced from their homes and nearly 20 million in need even before it hit, according to the United Nations.

As concerns grew that ongoing fighting could hamper humanitarian aid efforts, the military declared a temporary ceasefire Wednesday, through April 22. The announcement followed unilateral temporary ceasefires announced by armed resistance groups opposed to military rule.

On Thursday, however, there were renewed airstrikes in Kayah state, also known as Karenni, in eastern Myanmar, according to witnesses.

The military has said that it would still take "necessary" measures against resistance groups, if they use the ceasefire to regroup, train or launch attacks, and the groups have said they reserved the right to defend themselves.