China's first Spring Festival in a new phase of epidemic prevention: Epidemic is falling back, medical and nursing are still standing firm, rural areas are filling in the gaps

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For Chinese people, the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit is somewhat special, as it is the first Chinese New Year festival after the implementation of the “Category B control” for novel coronavirus infection in China.

With a series of optimization of epidemic prevention and control policies, the long-accumulated demand for cross-regional movement of people was further released during the Spring Festival, and the number of people returning home and traveling increased significantly. Some people are glad that they can go home for the Chinese New Year and enjoy the river and mountains; others are concerned about some risks that may be added by the movement of people.

What is the current situation of the new crown epidemic in China? According to the press conference of the State Council on the 14th of this month on the joint prevention and control mechanism, several peaks of the current round of the epidemic in China, namely the peak number of fever outpatient clinics, emergency clinics, and hospitalizations of newly crowned infected persons, have passed, and the normal consultation of general outpatient clinics is gradually resuming.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in a post on the 21st that China has generally passed the peak of the epidemic’s incidence, and that large, medium and small cities and counties nationwide are basically at the stage of the epidemic’s receding.

The change of relevant data can also reflect the positive trend. According to national epidemic information released by the CDC, on January 12, there were 1.27 million existing hospitalized cases and 104,018 severe (including critical) cases of new coronavirus infections in 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. By January 19, these two figures had dropped to 471,739 cases and 51,683 cases respectively.

A more intuitive feeling comes from the front-line medical staff. On New Year’s Eve, when Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining inspected the emergency care situation at Shanghai First People’s Hospital, the doctor on duty said that the number of emergency cases had dropped significantly as the peak of infection passed. Deng Yongmei, deputy chief physician of the emergency department at Peking University People’s Hospital, also told a reporter from China News Service who visited the hospital on New Year’s Eve, “When the epidemic was at its most intense some time ago, everyone was really working very hard, and it slowly got better.”

The situation tends to improve, but the epidemic is not yet over, the number of seriously ill patients in hospital is still at a high level, and improving the treatment capacity of medical and health institutions is still the focus of prevention and control work at the moment. When visiting emergency stations and hospitals on New Year’s Eve, Yin Yong, deputy secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and mayor, proposed to continue to improve the graded treatment system, strengthen the construction of treatment capacity and enhance the level of rescue and treatment.

Zou Xiantong, an attending physician in the Department of Endocrinology at Peking University People’s Hospital, spent New Year’s Eve at work for the third year. She said that the patients in the resuscitation room are basically in serious condition, and their vital signs should be monitored. If there are new patients as well as some patients to see the situation, medical staff should also be dealt with in a timely manner. During the interview, a new patient was brought in by the 120 emergency vehicle, and Zou Xiantong hurried back to work.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan on January 19 in the research of the new coronavirus infection medical treatment work, pointed out that the recent national overall epidemic has been at a lower epidemic level, prevention and control work to turn the section in a smooth and orderly manner, the effectiveness of medical treatment, the number of seriously ill patients in the hospital has steadily declined, but the task of treatment is still heavy.

Among them, medical resources in rural areas are relatively weak, and during the Spring Festival there are a large number of people returning from the city to rural areas, making up for the shortcomings of prevention and control in rural areas is the top priority of the current epidemic prevention and control. The task force on epidemic prevention and control in rural areas has recently sent 32 supervisory teams to supervise various places to promote the compacting of the “five levels of secretary” responsibility for the prevention and control of rural epidemics.

It is known that before the Spring Festival, China equipped nearly 600,000 village health offices with more than 1.17 million finger oxygen meters free of charge; the first batch of oxygen machines for 832 township health centers in poverty-stricken counties is nearly 80% in place, and the second batch of oxygen machines is on its way. A medical equipment company has also launched a public welfare project to donate more than 10,000 medical-grade oxygen machines to grassroots hospitals in all poverty-removing counties nationwide.

In addition, according to Mao Dezhi, deputy director and first-level inspector of the Department of Rural Cooperative Economy Guidance of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has recently joined hands with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Health and Welfare Commission to equip some rural areas with free analgesic small molecule drugs to solve the problem of drug shortage in rural areas.

Good news is also coming out one after another on the research and development of new crown treatment pharmacies. Just shortly before the Spring Festival, the State Drug Administration of China approved the marketing of two tolimumab injection biosimilars, which have been included in the 10th edition of the New Crown Treatment Protocol and the 4th edition of the New Crown Treatment Protocol for severe cases. In addition, the State Drug Administration also approved 13 medical oxygen products and the second domestic ECMO products to be listed.

After 3 years of absence from her hometown, Ms. Zhang, who lives in Dongcheng District of Beijing, chose to go back to her hometown in Shanxi Province for New Year’s Eve this year, and she brought 5 oximeters and some antipyretic and cough medicines for her relatives. Ms. Zhang found that relatives and friends have more or less hoarded some medicine, the situation of drug tension has been greatly relieved, and some nutritional supplements to protect the heart muscle and enhance immunity have become the new New Year’s goods this year.

Ms. Zhang also told CNN that some relatives in her hometown have been “Yang Kang”, some relatives are “Yang”, and some relatives are “not Yang”. On the first day of the New Year, everyone chose to pay their respects by phone and send red envelopes online, which seems to have reached a consensus: “Since there are still people at home who are not ‘yang’, don’t go to restaurants to set up a big table for dinner for now, and there is no rush to celebrate under the year.” (End)