Officials in Tai’an city, in China’s coastal Shandong Province, paid a resident $15,000 on Aug. 3. The individual reported a company group training in a hotel on July 30, according to local state media.
Authorities said organizers didn’t report the 12-day training to the local government, and its attendees came from several cities across China. After the attendees’ tests came back negative, they were ordered back to their homes.
A neighborhood committee in Yangzhou city announced residents could receive a $310 reward if they reported others who had traveled from infected areas or had close contact with confirmed cases. A district office in the city offered to pay people $775 for providing information, and would double the reward if the case is confirmed, according to state news outlet ThePaper.cn.
Authorities attributed the outbreak in Yangzhou to a 64-year-old female citizen who failed to inform local officials after traveling back from the epicenter Nanjing on July 21. Before seeking treatment for cough and fever on July 27, she frequently visited crowded places, including entertainment centres used for playing cards and mah-jong, restaurants, and shops, according to state mouthpiece Xinhua.
Local police have detained the woman, according to the report.
Yangzhou authorities have also set up a special hotline for members of the public to report information related to the spread of the CCP virus.
Chinese commentator Li Muyang said the cash incentives indicate that authorities are under pressure to squash the CCP virus outbreak. But Li suggested officials worry more about their positions than the safety of local citizens.
The mayor of Yangzhou city resigned on Aug. 2. The provincial governor criticized the mayor on Aug. 1 because COVID-19 positive patients were identified too late, resulting in the city’s situation becoming “complicated and serious.”
Breakthrough Cases
Shanghai health officials reported on Aug. 3 that an inoculated airport worker had returned a positive test result of the CCP virus. The head of the Shanghai panel overseeing the treatment of COVID-19, Zhang Wenhong, confirmed the infected worker had been vaccinated.“The staff had received vaccines, of course, because the high-risk group must be vaccinated according to the vaccination rules,” Zhang said at a press conference on Tuesday. He added that 85 percent of the adult population in Shanghai, the largest city in China, had been vaccinated, and all airport workers were inoculated.
Gene sequencing results show a high match of the Delta variant, but it is not related to the new cases in Nanjing, authorities said on Wednesday.
Shanghai had tested over 68,000 people related to the case on Aug. 4, Shanghai health officials said.
In another coastal city, Xiamen, next to the Taiwan Strait, an airport worker, and his three family members were confirmed to be infected with the CCP virus on July 30. The local authorities did not mention whether they had received Chinese vaccines, but airport workers are listed as a high-risk group on China’s vaccination priority list.
Mass Testing Relaunched
In response to the rising number of breakthrough cases, the Chinese regime has doubled down on its containment approach with mass testing and strict lockdowns.
Zhuhai, a city neighboring Macao, announced the first round of mass testing of 2 million people on the evening of Aug. 4.
Meanwhile, authorities of all 31 provinces have urged people to avoid travel and gatherings while many domestic flights, ships, and trains have been canceled. State media reported that the Chinese regime tightened the border controls, suspending the issuing of entry and exit documents for non-essential, non-emergency travel.
