An official in Hubei province, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, was suspended from work for inspection on Friday over reprimanding a medical worker for no reason.

File photo: sipaphoto.com

On the evening of Feb 20, an online video showing a man baselessly reprimanding a medical worker at Wuhan No 7 Hospital in Wuhan, the province's capital city, went viral.

Later, it was found that the man was Zhu Baohua, deputy head of the logistics service center's preparatory group of the Hubei Provincial Market Supervision Bureau.

In the video, Zhu questioned a female medical worker about why the patient room he had asked to be cleaned hadn't been completed yet. The worker explained that room cleaning is done by another department, so she had to contact her leader and arrange for the cleaner to finish it.

But Zhu insisted and said that "I don't want to hear your explanations, there is nothing to explain -- it (cleaning the room) is your job." The video lasted for about 90 seconds, with Zhu interrupting the medical worker several times and criticizing her in an aggressive tone.

The bureau held a meeting overnight on Feb 20, and all the members in the meeting believed that Zhu showed no respect and gratitude for the medical workers, who are fighting the epidemic on the front line, and that Zhu's attitude was insolent, unreasonable and bossy, resulting in a negative social influence.

Zhu was suspended from his work and ordered to make a sincere apology to the medical worker and do a deep self-review and inspection for the bureau.

Protecting and taking care of medical personnel in every aspect have been mentioned in various ways by officials at different levels since the outbreak. In order to ensure the physical and mental health of medical personnel, Hubei has issued a number of measures to improve their work and rest conditions.

Currently, apart from medical workers from Hubei, there are over 30,000 medics from all over the country combating the epidemic in Hubei.

Earlier, the National Health Commission, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued a circular, proposing a crackdown on seven categories of crimes involving medical staff, including assaulting, deliberately injuring, openly insulting, intimidating or slandering medical personnel.