Over 5,000 People Arrested in China for Coronavirus Pandemic-Related Crimes

BEIJING, KOMPAS.com – The Chinese government has arrested 5,800 people coronavirus pandemic-related crimes since January, according to the State Prosecutor’s Office.

Among the criminal charges include suspicion of killing health workers, selling defective medical equipment, and lying about one’s travel history.

One coronavirus pandemic-related crime involved a shopper who punched another customer to death for not wearing a mask in a supermarket.

Other cases included a person who deliberately mowed down medical workers with a car, and another was arrested for stabbing a health inspector with a dagger when monitoring temperatures.

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Some have also been accused of embezzling money collected from fundraisers to help coronavirus patients, selling defective medical equipment, and lying about their travel history or health condition.

"From January to July, 5,797 people were arrested and 6,755 were prosecuted," the Supreme People's Procuratorate said in a statement Thursday.

The statement did not specify how many people were still in detention or whether some had already been sentenced.

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China has largely brought the spread of the novel coronavirus under control — since it first emerged in the central city of Wuhan in December 2019 — with strict lockdowns, aggressive contact tracing and close monitoring of neighborhoods.