A community service employee sprays disinfectant on a local resident on Wednesday in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, which is also the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. The city government has launched door-to-door visits of every household and imposed strict quarantine measures in residential communities. Photo: Cui Meng/GT

A total of 22 villagers in the epidemic-stricken Hubei Province were hospitalized after mistakenly consuming antiseptic effervescent tablets on Friday following the order of a village official, who thought the tablets were oral medication to prevent COVID-19 pneumonia. 

All the 22 people have received treatment in local county's hospital and are in a stable condition, according to a report of the Huangmei township, which administrates the village,  on Sunday.  

Twenty-one people will be discharged from hospital on Monday while another one, an elderly person with another disease, will remain in hospital for observation, the government said. 

According to the government announcement, 22 people mistakenly took the tablets, which are made from the powerful disinfectant chlorine dioxide, on Friday, after receiving them from local officials. 

One of the officials, Jiang Jianjun, told them to take one tablet per person as he wrongly took the tablets as a preventative medicine to stop COVID-19 pneumonia.

Jiang's colleague did not explain the method to use the tablets as the latter took for granted that Jiang would know what the tablets contained.

After the incident, Huangmei authorities vowed to rectify local disease prevention and control work, and attach the labels of names and usage methods of disinfectants.    

Global Times