Cover News:

Recently, there has been significant attention paid to discrimination against people who have recovered from COVID-19 in the job market. How does the MOHRSS respond to it? How should the rights of people who have recovered from COVID-19 be protected? Thank you.

Li Zhong:

Resolutely preventing and addressing discrimination in employment is an important measure to stabilize employment. The MOHRSS has paid great attention to, and taken swift actions against, employment discrimination some time ago against people who have recovered from COVID-19. We have taken a series of measures and specially issued a notice. I will invite Ms. Zhang to share more.

Zhang Ying:

Thank you for your question and your attention to this issue. Resolutely preventing and stopping discrimination in employment is an important part of the work to stabilize employment and a necessary requirement for maintaining social fairness and justice. Recently, some companies and organizations in some localities have abused tools for testing result queries, such as health codes, and discriminated against people who have recovered from COVID-19 in employment, seriously infringing on their equal rights to employment.

The MOHRSS has paid great attention to these issues and acted quickly. We and the National Health Commission issued an emergency notice on July 29 to resolutely regulate against employment discrimination against people who have recovered from COVID-19, making detailed regulations and work arrangements to prohibit the discrimination. Specifically, it can be summarized as one "no … may" and four "it is prohibited."

The "no … may" refers to that no organization or individual may unlawfully query COVID-19 nucleic acid test results unless it is out of epidemic prevention and control needs and the period for querying the test information is set in a scientific and reasonable manner.

The four "it is prohibited" refers to that it is prohibited to publish recruitment containing discriminative content against people who have recovered from COVID-19; it is prohibited to refuse to recruit people who have recovered from COVID-19 for the reason that they were tested COVID-19 positive; it is prohibited to discriminate against people who have recovered from COVID-19 in hiring and working; it is prohibited to arbitrarily fire or dismiss people who have recovered from COVID-19 in violation of the law.

For employers and human resources service agencies violating the above provisions, human resources, social security, and health departments at all levels will take effective measures such as administrative inquiry, public exposure, and administrative punishment, and will deal with any violation resolutely.

On Aug. 10, the MOHRSS and the Supreme People's Court issued a notice on strengthening administrative and judicial collaboration to safeguard equal rights of people who have recovered from COVID-19 to employment, requiring strengthening the handling of employment discrimination cases, accepting relevant litigation in accordance with the law, reasonably allocating burdens of proof, and improving the efficiency of judicial protection in the process of filing, handling, and settling.

We will continue to work hard to ensure equal rights of people to employment. Thank you.

Chen Wenjun:

That's all for today's press conference. Thank you to all the speakers and friends from the press. Goodbye! 

Translated and edited by Wang Qian, Xu Xiaoxuan, Ma Yujia, Liu Sitong, Xu Kailin, Yuan Fang, Liu Jianing, Zhang Rui, Zhou Jing, Yan Bin, Li Huiru, Zhang Jiaqi, Huang Shan, David Ball, Jay Birbeck, and Tom Arnstein. In case of any discrepancy between the English and Chinese texts, the Chinese version is deemed to prevail.

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