Beijing mayor 'fired over Sars outbreak'

Beijing’s new mayor has been fired after the Chinese capital announced a nearly tenfold increase in cases of the deadly Sars disease, boosting its total from 37 to 346.

Meng Xuenong was also sacked from his Communist Party post yesterday along with the country’s health minister amid growing complaints about how the government has handled the crisis.

And in another step that appeared to show China beginning to take Sars seriously, officials cancelled the week-long May Day holiday in a bid to prevent tens of millions of Chinese travelling and spreading the virus.

Across China, 79 people have died and 1,814 cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) have been reported. Critics say Beijing’s slow response may have allowed the number of cases to spiral and the disease to spread.

A World Health Organisation team is visiting Shanghai to study how that city is coping with Sars, compared with the capital.

Shanghai is China’s business hub, with a web of connections to Hong Kong, Beijing and other places with high Sars infection rates, but city officials insist there are only two confirmed Sars cases there.

In Singapore, authorities have put 2,400 workers in quarantine and closed a large vegetable market for 10 days after a man working there was diagnosed with Sars.

In Hong Kong the Sars death toll has risen to 88, the highest in the world. Seven Sars deaths were reported there yesterday, following 12 on Saturday. Sars has now claimed at least 205 lives worldwide.

Meng had been mayor of the Chinese capital for only three months when he was dismissed as part of a “reshuffling of major officials in the city government,” the state-run Beijing Morning News said.

The newspaper said the decision came at a meeting where the Communist Party’s top personnel official criticised the city’s handling of Sars.

A city government spokesman, Liu Wei, declined to comment on whether Meng – a veteran of the Beijing bureaucracy – had been fired, saying such decisions were the responsibility of the Beijing legislature.

A detailed report in the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper said city officials had done a poor job of gathering information on the disease, keeping track of new infections and tracing the movements of infected people.

The state-run newspaper quoted He Guoqiang, chief of the party organisation department, who reportedly spoke at a meeting about Sars yesterday.

The paper quoted him as saying the failure to provide timely and accurate reports on the progress of the disease handicapped those trying to prevent and treat it.

“The party centre has decided to make adjustments in the main leadership of Beijing in order to improve the Beijing region’s handling of Sars prevention work and ensure overall stability in the capital,” the Beijing Youth Daily quoted He as saying.

The paper reported that the city’s top official, Communist Party secretary Liu Qi, said at the meeting that the city leadership had failed to take adequate measures to deal with Sars.

There was no word on any punishment he might face.

The Beijing Morning News and the Beijing Daily reported that Meng’s party position would go to Wang Qishan, the party chief from the southern province of Hainan. Wang has also been nominated to take over as mayor, the papers said.

There was no immediate word on the fate of Health Minister Zhang Wenkang, who was removed yesterday as the ministry’s party secretary and fired from other party posts.

The latest developments came after Chinese leaders this week declared fighting Sars a national priority following weeks of criticism that the communist government reacted too slowly to the mysterious, deadly outbreak.