China enlists coronavirus prevention squad for hospitals to help beat next wave
- With infections from medical facilities a serious problem, this Chinese team aims to assess risks and establish an alarm system
- Country is bracing for sporadic outbreaks over the winter
The group comprising 67 experts from hospitals across China will not only advise on policies around infection prevention and control arrangements in hospitals and other institutions, but also analyse risks and set up an alarm system for infectious diseases. The group will also investigate key public health events, the commission said on Monday.
The commission said the team was headed by Fu Qiang, a deputy director of the NHC’s health development and research centre, and members would serve on the team for three years.
It is expected the panel will improve the ability of medical services to prevent and control infectious diseases, make the most of experts’ academic strengths and safeguard people’s health.
A total of 27 new Covid-19 cases were reported in China on Monday, up from 21 a day earlier. Among them, 12 were imported cases and 15 locally transmitted from the northeastern province of Liaoning and Beijing.
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Zhang Boli, an expert with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and head of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said this month that China was expected to have “multipoint sporadic” outbreaks this winter.
The CAT scan room at the hospital was found to be a place of transmission because of “unregulated disease control and sanitation measures”, according to investigators from the national and provincial centres for disease control.
Since then, health authorities across the nation have conducted inspections of hospitals and held talks with hospital chiefs to identify and strengthen weak links.
“The involvement of experts is a step forward in improving the prevention efforts,” an infectious disease department head at a Beijing public hospital said on the condition of anonymity. “However, their role is limited to providing advice. It’s unrealistic to expect them to play a big role in crucial moments, such as in the investigation of public health events.”
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The commission sent experts in two groups to Wuhan – where the initial outbreak was reported – on December 31, 2019, and January 8 this year to look into what was going on when the first cases of the unknown pneumonia were reported.
The first batch of experts declared there was no evidence to show the disease could be transmitted from person to person, while the second group played down the seriousness and said it could be prevented and controlled.
The alarm did not ring until a senior advisory group sent directly by the State Council, which included top experts such as Zhong Nanshan and Li Lanjuan, returned from Wuhan on January 20. The group reported directly to the State Council and concluded there was “very efficient” human-to-human transmission.
Facing criticism, a member of the second team told Caijing magazine in early February that they could not get access to important data and information while investigating in Wuhan.
“We did not see any formal report about the origin of the disease or shared information of the first patients … We couldn’t do anything about it. In the end, we basically went to the front line to treat patients in Wuhan,” the magazine quoted the expert as saying.
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China is considering setting up a powerful new disease control agency as part of public health reforms in the aftermath of the pandemic, the Caixin media group reported this month, citing unnamed government insiders and public health experts.
The government body, for now known informally as the “big disease-control bureau”, will oversee work aimed at preventing future outbreaks and managing emerging ones. The agency might combine several departments of the NHC and emergency responses with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention , according to the Caixin report.
