Wuhan people need 'gratitude education': official

A woman is disinfected by volunteers as she arrives at a hotel for a 14-day quarantine after being discharged from a hospital in Wuhan. File photo: AFP

Wuhan Communist Party secretary Wang Zhonglin says the city's residents need to be given 'gratitude education'.

A senior Communist Party official has called for the people of Coronavirus-hit Wuhan to be given "gratitude education".



Wang Zhonglin, the party secretary of the city at the epicentre of the mainland's Covid-19 outbreak, said Wuhan residents should work with the authorities to form "positive energy".



To achieve this, he said, party officials should carry out various forms of publicity and activities, including "gratitude education".



The Changjiang Daily quotes Wang as saying at a meeting of officials on the epidemic that the people of Wuhan are heroes, echoing a previous remark made by President Xi Jinping. Wang added that the city's residents are people who know how to be grateful.



He said the authorities must mobilize the masses to make sure they do a good job in epidemic prevention and control. He said there have been some positive changes in this regard in Wuhan, but the task at hand is still difficult.



The comments come after a video went viral on social media showing Wuhan residents haranguing vice premier Sun Chunlan, shouting "it's all fake" from the windows of their apartments as she inspected a neighbourhood in the city.



Online censors have been working flat out to scrub a barrage of negative comments on mainland social media which reveal public anger over the way the authorities have handled the Covid-19 outbreak which exploded early this year.



Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province have so far borne the brunt of the virus outbreak, which is now known to have infected more than 100,000 people across the world.