scholarly journals A Citywide ‘Virus Testing': Chinese Government's Response to Preventing and Controlling the Second Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liting Zhou ◽  
Hans Nibshan Seesaghur ◽  
Nadeem Akhtar ◽  
Jason Boolakee ◽  
Cornelius B. Pratt

Containing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is a daunting challenge globally. China, as well as a handful of other countries, has, for the most part, contained it by implementing strict policies. Wuhan's citywide virus-testing program presents a way forward in preventing and controlling the uncertainty, anxiety, instability and complexity it faces over the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2. Inarguably, the health crisis requires time-tested strategies and tactics for coordinating governments' and social entities' response to the health crisis, with a goal toward having and ensuring sustained effectiveness. Because of a possible recurrence of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, the Prevention and Control Headquarters of Wuhan on COVID-19 launched a massive virus testing of Wuhan's 11 million residents; it was completed within 10 days. In light of this unprecedented mass testing, this study applies the situational crisis communication theory to analyze this massive virus-testing process and the mechanisms involved to contain SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan. While many countries still have partial lockdowns, the second outbreak in Wuhan was an indication of what awaited all SARS-CoV-2-stricken countries post-lockdowns and after community restrictions had been lifted. Therefore, the recently implemented Wuhan control mechanism (in cities, districts and townships) may become a hortatory guide to other world regions as they contend with and consider appropriate measures to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and to ensure public safety.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinlong Shi ◽  
Xing Gao ◽  
Shuyan Xue ◽  
Fengqing Li ◽  
Qifan Nie ◽  
...  

AbstractThe novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) outbreak that emerged in late 2019 has posed a severe threat to human health and social and economic development, and thus has become a major public health crisis affecting the world. The spread of COVID-19 in population and regions is a typical geographical process, which is worth discussing from the geographical perspective. This paper focuses on Shandong province, which has a high incidence, though the first Chinese confirmed case was reported from Hubei province. Based on the data of reported confirmed cases and the detailed information of cases collected manually, we used text analysis, mathematical statistics and spatial analysis to reveal the demographic characteristics of confirmed cases and the spatio-temporal evolution process of the epidemic, and to explore the comprehensive mechanism of epidemic evolution and prevention and control. The results show that: (1) the incidence rate of COVID-19 in Shandong is 0.76/100,000. The majority of confirmed cases are old and middle-aged people who are infected by the intra-province diffusion, followed by young and middle-aged people who are infected outside the province. (2) Up to February 5, the number of daily confirmed cases shows a trend of “rapid increase before slowing down”, among which, the changes of age and gender are closely related to population migration, epidemic characteristics and intervention measures. (3) Affected by the regional economy and population, the spatial distribution of the confirmed cases is obviously unbalanced, with the cluster pattern of “high–low” and “low–high”. (4) The evolution of the migration pattern, affected by the geographical location of Wuhan and Chinese traditional culture, is dominated by “cross-provincial” and “intra-provincial” direct flow, and generally shows the trend of “southwest → northeast”. Finally, combined with the targeted countermeasures of “source-flow-sink”, the comprehensive mechanism of COVID-19 epidemic evolution and prevention and control in Shandong is revealed. External and internal prevention and control measures are also figured out.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiantian Zhang ◽  
Wenming Shi ◽  
Ying Wang ◽  
Ge Bai ◽  
Ruiming Dai ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundThe novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is spreading rapidly throughout China and the world. Hence, early surveillance and public health emergency disposal are considered crucial to curb this emerging infectious disease. However, studies that investigated the early surveillance and public health emergency disposal for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 outbreak in China are relatively few. We aimed to compare the strengths and weaknesses of early surveillance and public health emergency disposal for prevention and control between COVID-19 and H7N9 avian influenza, which was commended by the international community, in China.MethodsA case-comparison study was conducted using a set of six key time nodes to form a reference framework for evaluating early surveillance and public health emergency disposal between H7N9 avian influenza (2013) in Shanghai, China and COVID-19 in Wuhan, China.FindingsA report to the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, China, for the first hospitalized patient was sent after 6 and 20 days for H7N9 avian influenza and COVID-19, respectively. In contrast, the pathogen was identified faster in the case of COVID-19 than in the case of H7N9 avian influenza (12 days vs. 31 days). The government response regarding COVID-19 was 10 days later than that regarding avian influenza. The entire process of early surveillance and public health emergency disposal lasted 5 days longer in COVID-19 than in H7N9 avian influenza (46 days vs. 41 days).ConclusionsThe identification of the unknown pathogen improved in China between the outbreaks of avian influenza and COVID-19. The longer emergency disposal period in the case of COVID-19 could be attributed to the government’s slower response to the epidemic. Improving public health emergency management could lessen the adverse social effects of emerging infectious diseases and public health crisis in the future.ContributorsTZ, WS, and LL designed the project, processed and analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. YW, GB, RD, and QW edited the manuscript. All authors revised the draft.


Author(s):  
Jingya Xu ◽  
Xiling Lin ◽  
Xiaowen Pan ◽  
Xin Huang ◽  
Ying Chen ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The ongoing outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to declaration of public health emergency of international concern by World Health Organization and the first-level public health emergency response in China. We aimed to share the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism taken in Mainland China and evaluate the effectiveness.Methods A powerful Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism was adopted to fight against COVID-19 in Mainland China. Data were collected from the daily epidemic reports released by the national and provincial health commissions of China from January 21 to April 6, 2020. Global data were collected from daily situation reports by World Health Organization.Results As of April 6, 2020, there were 81,740 confirmed COVID-19 cases (32 new) in Mainland China. The case fatality ratio was 4.74% and 0.85% in and outside Hubei respectively. It is gratifying to see that there were up to 22 provinces reporting zero new infections, but it can’t be ignored that there were 1,196,651 confirmed cases (68,700 new) reported in over 221 countries and territories outside China and the total death number were 69,274, nowadays China is facing great challenges of imported cases.Conclusions Great achievements have been made in controlling the spread of COVID-19 in Mainland China, but it is still a major challenge worldwide. The comprehensive and powerful control measures taken by Mainland China have proved to be effective and might be applicable to other regions.


Author(s):  
Vilma Andia-Choquepuma ◽  
Daniza Juana Leon-Escobedo ◽  
Himer Avila-George ◽  
orge Sánchez-Garcés ◽  
Ruth Elizabeth Villafuerte-Alcántara ◽  
...  

After the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic, the Peruvian government took preventive measures to counteract the spread of the virus by issuing Supreme Decree No. 008-2020-SA. This decree contains prevention and control measures aimed at ports, airports, land entry points, educational centers, transportation and workplaces.


2022 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linhua Zhou ◽  
Xinmiao Rong ◽  
Meng Fan ◽  
Liu Yang ◽  
Huidi Chu ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Cai ◽  
Xiao Tan ◽  
Ruofan Ma

A range of shortcomings was exposed in China’s medical waste disposal capabilities in responding to public health emergencies under outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) epidemic. Especially, the traditional medical waste disposal capacity allocation and the prevention and control mechanism oriented to “a single city” have been far from meeting the needs of medical waste disposal and management during the emergency period. Therefore, suggestions on establishing the regional joint prevention, control and disposal mechanism of medical waste were put forward in this paper with reference to the ideas of China’s existing regional joint prevention and control mechanism for air and water pollution, which covered the aspects of establishment of coordinating agencies, cross-regional collaborative disposal, cross-regional joint response to emergencies, cross-regional collaborative management and effectiveness evaluation.


Author(s):  
Md Abdullah Al Jubayer Biswas ◽  
Md Zakiul Hassan ◽  
Mohammad Riashad Monjur ◽  
Md Saiful Islam ◽  
Aninda Rahman ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Baseline assessment of standard precaution relating to infection prevention and control (IPC) preparedness to fight health crisis within healthcare facilities at different levels and its associated factors in Bangladesh remains unknown. Methods: We analyzed the nationally representative Bangladesh health facility survey (BHFS) data conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) during July–October 2017. We used the World Health Organization (WHO) Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) manual to determine the standard precautions related to the IPC readiness index. Using a conceptual framework and multivariable linear regression, we identified the factors associated with the readiness index. Results: We analyzed data for 1,524 surveyed healthcare facilities. On average, only 44% of the standard precaution elements were available in all facilities. Essential elements, such as guidelines for standard precautions (30%), hand-washing soap (29%), and pedal bins (38%), were not readily available in all facilities. The tuberculosis service area was least prepared, with 85% of elements required for standard precaution deficient in all facilities. Significantly lower readiness indexes were observed in the rural healthcare facilities (mean difference, −13.2), healthcare facilities administered by the MoHFW (mean difference, −7.8), and private facilities (mean difference, −10.1) compared to corresponding reference categories. Conclusions: Our study revealed a severe lack of standard precaution elements in most healthcare facilities, particularly in rural health centers. These data can provide a baseline from which to measure improvement in infection prevention and control (IPC) in these facilities and to identify areas of gaps for targeted interventions to improve IPC strategies that can improve the Bangladesh health system.


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