Cities urged to put people first in combating virus

woman, which also exposed loopholes in antiepidemic work and left the local government profound lessons. Relevant department heads in Xi’an conducted self-criticism at the meeting. The incident prompted the government of Shaanxi Province, where Xi’an is located, to set up a joint investigation team, and several officials and hospital-related persons-in-charge in Xi’an were disciplined for their poor performance.

After Sun’s remarks, the Global Times learned on Friday from local hospitals, residents and communities that Xi’an has been taking measures to ensure patients will not be refused.

While Xi’an rushed remedial measures across the city, other cities were also perfecting their measures to prevent similar tragedies.

Chinese cities have introduced their own regulations on how to treat patients without a nucleic acid test certificate and set up a “green channel” for patients in urgent need after the Wuhan outbreak two years ago, and the reason that several hospitals in Xi’an still failed was largely because of “systematic irresponsibility” of different public institutions, observers said.

But some doctors in Xi’an said they didn’t have many choices due to various restrictions.

A local pediatrician said that since the lockdown in Xi’an, he and his co-workers have been working around the clock to treat as many patients as possible, but they face restrictions. For example, there were health code requirements for patients to enter the hospital, and as the groups who implemented the policy were not those who formulated the policy, doctors like him don’t have “a big say” on this matter, and sometimes different people who carry out the policies lead to different outcomes, he said.

Liu Yuanju, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, said that the medical staff in those tragedies were bureaucratic and they put more emphasis on being responsible to their superiors and rigid rules than to patients who stood in front of them in urgent need of medical treatment.

Yang Xuedong, a professor of political science at Tsinghua University, said that since similar cases have been reported this week, the local Xi’an governments would need to hold more officials with malpractices accountable based on Communist Party of China (CPC) disciplines and laws as it’s an important part of China’s overall COVID-19 policy.

Xie Maosong, senior research fellow at the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, said that many officials were punished for neglecting their duty rather than breaking laws as Party discipline is stricter than the law.

Xi’an has punished 26 officials in this wave of epidemic resurgence. In the summer of 2021, China penalized 70 officials amid the Delta resurgence in Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces.

Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed on various occasions that China puts the people first in combating COVID-19, for nothing in the world is more precious than people’s lives. Over the past two years, Chinese cities have been improving their epidemic response based on experience and lessons from precious outbreaks.

Xie said that the CPC has enhanced its talent selection mechanism by assessing officials’ COVID-19 response, which is better than the West’s two-party system. He said that the COVID-19 response failure in countries like the US was partially because it would not punish officials or relevant personnel, and that a lack of high standards will easily lead to lax work.