Inmates Infected With COVID-19, Prison Officers In China Discharged

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JAKARTA - The corona virus or COVID-19 has infected 234 people in two prisons located outside Hubei Province, where the virus outbreak started. As a result of the infection of the prisoners, a high-ranking official who is deemed responsible for the outbreak in the prison has been fired.

The two prisons are located in northern Shandong Province and eastern Zhejiang Province, respectively. Authorities then sacked the Provincial Judiciary Chief in Shandong after the outbreak level at Rencheng Prison, Jining, was detected. In all, 207 people in the prison tested positive.

The prison first discovered a case of COVID-19 in a prison official on February 13. After that, seven prison officers were also fired, authorities said at a media briefing.

Quoted from Reuters, Friday, February 21, 2020, Yu Chenghe, who is the deputy secretary general of the Shandong Province government, said the dismissal was carried out for several reasons. Among other things, prison officials in several departments were deemed not carrying out their responsibilities properly, were not working solidly, and did not carry out infection prevention well.

Shandong Province health authorities said they had appointed a hospital in Jining to treat prisoners infected with COVID-19. They also promised to allocate facilities within the prison for treatment. The Chinese government has also sent a team to investigate the prison.

Meanwhile in Zhejiang Province, 27 prisoners tested positive for COVID-19 this week. The director and chairman of the Communist Party at Shilifeng prison in Zhejiang was sacked and an investigation into the outbreak has been launched, the provincial government said on its social media site.

In Shandong Province alone, there are 749 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 278 people have been declared cured. Meanwhile, in Zhejiang Province, 1,203 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed and 654 of them have been declared cured.

Previously, Hubei Province also found a total of 271 cases in the two prisons in the province. As many as 230 of them were COVID-19 cases occurring in women's prisons in Wuhan, according to the Hubei Daily newspaper. The top official at the women's prison has been fired for failing to control the spread of the virus.

As the COVID-19 outbreak outside China escalates, the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that countries that do not take COVID-19 prevention are considered "public enemy number one".

In addition, officials in the city of Wuhan said that frontline health workers who contracted the virus would be given 3,000 yuan (around Rp. 5,884,669) as compensation. The families of those who have died from the virus will receive 5,000 yuan (around Rp9,807,782) which is said to be a condolence fund.

Chinese netizens criticized the numbers for being too small and others also indicated that families and workers infected with the virus would be eligible for compensation in kind other than cash.