A medical worker collects a throat swab sample from a resident in Xingtai, Hebei Province, on January 17. Photo: Xinhua
Police have detained an employee of a COVID-19 testing agency in Longyao county, Xingtai of North China’s Hebei Province, for falsifying testing results. The company in question has had its business operations suspended.
Jinan Huaxi Medical Laboratory, which was hired to process COVID-19 tests in Longyao, reported on January 14 to the local health commission that it had completed analyzing some 310,000 swab samples taken from the county's residents, which all returned negative results, when in fact it had not even completed the testing.
Two days later, the company made a different claim, saying that a set of samples had tested positive. The county immediately launched an investigation, and found two confirmed cases and one asymptomatic case on Sunday, exposing the lab's false reporting of the samples that it had received.
A staffer from the company, surnamed Zhai, who reported false information to the local health commission, was detained by police on Tuesday on suspicion of endangering public safety. Huaxi Medical Laboratory has also been ordered to suspend its business operations.
Longyao county began rolling out the third round of COVID-19 screening for all of 300,000 of its residents on Monday. All agencies for this round of testing are public medical institutions.
Global Times