China’s CDC set for US$270 million expansion to address Covid-19 failings
- New labs and training facilities part of planned revamp to strengthen disease detection and public health emergencies
- Beijing has defended early response to disease but acknowledged failure of multibillion dollar warning system
A notice on the National Health Commission website said new 171,400 square metre (1.8 million square feet) facilities would be built at its headquarters in Beijing’s Changping district to strengthen its handling of significant infectious and chronic diseases.
The CDC was founded in 2002, as about 4,000 health and epidemic prevention stations were phased out to make way for a modern public health system.
But weaknesses in testing, disease surveillance and early warnings became apparent only a year later when China failed to swiftly report a new deadly infectious disease, severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) or identify the pathogen that causes it.
The Sars epidemic was a wake-up call and prompted the central government to put billions of yuan into building emergency centres and hospitals for infectious diseases in central and western provinces. Another 14.3 billion yuan was spent on an information network and on prevention and control of serious disease as the government’s plan to improve the public health system within three years.
Now China is having another round of upgrades to its public health and disease prevention system after that multibillion dollar surveillance programme failed to pick up the new coronavirus, which hit Wuhan, in the central province of Hubei, in late 2019.