Wuhan prisons ordered to shoulder duties in virus fight

Every prison in Wuhan, Hubei province, the center of the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak, has been ordered to sign a responsibility contract with the city's government to prevent the spread of the epidemic in such a special place, a Wuhan top official said on Saturday.

Wang Zhonglin, secretary of the Communist Party of China's Wuhan City Committee, demanded the city's political and legal affairs commission dispatch teams to prisons citywide to inspect and supervise problems in the prevention and control of the disease behind bars.

He made the order when researching the prevention and control work in prisons on Saturday, urging the teams to push the prisons to shoulder their responsibilities and clarifying prison officials will be held accountable if they are found doing something improper in the implementation.

The country has taken measures to intensify control to curb the spread of the virus in prisons since five prisons in three provinces -- Hubei, Zhejiang and Shandong -- reported infections of inmates on Feb 21.

As of Tuesday, a total of 555 confirmed and 19 suspected cases of the virus were reported in the five prisons, according to the Ministry of Justice.

On Wednesday, a joint inspection team led by the Ministry of Justice went to Wuhan to investigate a case in which an ex-inmate surnamed Huang was driven by her family members to Beijing from a prison in Wuhan, which has been implementing a lockdown policy since Jan 23.

Also on that day, Ying Yong, Party chief of Hubei, ordered the province to thoroughly probe the case and respond in a timely manner to public concerns.