A regional manager at a medical diagnostics company in China was detained by authorities on allegations of violating rules on preventing the spread of COVID-19.
The specifics of how the man surnamed Zhang, of the Zhengzhou KingMed Clinical Laboratory Center, broke the rules are unclear, and he is now facing an investigation, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday.
“The group attaches great importance to this incident and is actively cooperating with the authorities on the investigation,” KingMed said in a statement. “[We] urge the public not to manufacture and spread rumours, and not to circulate false information.”
Police in the city of Yuzhou accused Zhang of violating the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases and of “committing acts that caused the spread of the coronavirus or seriously increased the danger of spreading it,” the report said.
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Yuzhou was locked down after three asymptomatic COVID-19 cases were detected in early January, the BBC reported last week. The city has a population of 1.1 million people. It is located in the province of Henan.
A source told the South China Morning Post that KingMed lost a contract for COVID-19 testing in the city after complaints surfaced about its handling of samples. The company provides medical testing to over 23,000 medical facilities, according to its website.
Representatives from KingMed did not respond to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
The COVID-19 case count in Yuzhou is unclear. Its province, Henan, reported 118 positive cases in its Wednesday update, according to data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. This was up from 87 cases on Tuesday.
COVID-19 data from China has been subjected to skepticism by officials in the United States.
China, which has an estimated population of about 1.4 billion people, has reported 104,189 cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to data from Worldometer. For comparison, the U.S., with a population of about 330 million people, reported 677,799 cases Tuesday, Worlometer said.
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The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. U.S. officials and scientists theorized the virus could have come from a lab leak in Wuhan or have natural origins. The Chinese government, which denies COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab, has pushed back against suggestions for more investigation.
