Four county-level officials were sacked for deception and failing to do their jobs in dealing with the Streptococcus suis outbreak in southwest China's Sichuan Province, Neijiang City's Discipline Inspection Committee announced on August 5.

The officials were Li Mingzhong, chief of Zizhong County animal husbandry and food bureau, Liu Wei and Jiang Xiaogang, chief and deputy chief of the county animal epidemic prevention and supervision station, and Chen Bin, chief of Taiping Town animal husbandry and veterinary station.

Seventy-eight pigs died between July 15 and 24 in Zizhong, a Neijiang county near Ziyang City, where the first case of the pig-borne disease was reported on June 24.

Li and his colleagues are alleged to have fabricated a report that the pigs had been either buried deeply or slaughtered, or that their whereabouts were unknown.

On July 27, state inspectors asked Li's office to verify the whereabouts of six of the pigs' carcasses, but they did not do so.

Three days later, reporters from China Central Television were taken by Li, Liu, Jiang and Chen to the homes of six farmers whose pigs had died. The apparent aim was to show how the pigs were properly disposed of but the reporters discovered more questions than answers.

The four officials then tried to deceive a county investigation team on August 1, said Neijiang Mayor Wang Minghui, but they failed.

By noon yesterday, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said 39 people had died from the disease in Sichuan, the latest on Saturday morning. In the 24 hours before Sunday noon, there were no new infections and 16 were discharged from hospital leaving 101 in care, 10 of whom were in a critical condition.

The MOH's daily update did not give current figures for numbers of infections or for how many of these were confirmed, but based on previous numbers it is thought that 210 are now infected. Of the 206 cases reported last Thursday, 165 had been confirmed and 41 were suspected.

The Ministry of Agriculture reported on Thursday that 644 pigs had died from the disease in the province.

(China Daily August 8, 2005)