How is China coping with the first Spring Festival after the adjustment of anti-epidemic policy? The Ministry of Transportation responds

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Passengers line up at Jinhua Station to enter the station in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, Jan. 3, 2023.

“With the upcoming 2 billion passenger migration, how will China cope with the tests it faces during the Spring Festival after the epidemic is liberalized and what are the specific initiatives?” On January 6, the State Council Information Office held a press conference to introduce the situation related to the full implementation of the Spring Festival service, at which a reporter asked a question.

“Do a good job this year’s Spring Festival, the epidemic prevention and control is critical.” Deputy Director of the Spring Festival Work Task Force Office, the Ministry of Transport Transport Services Division Director Cai Unity introduced the Spring Festival period, the movement of people, freight logistics activities are frequent, intensive cross-activity of people, the risk of infection. In response to these circumstances, combined with the implementation of the national measures for the new coronavirus “Class B B control”, the Spring Festival Task Force issued a special spring epidemic prevention and control guide, also issued the Spring Festival travel service guidelines. We will guide all places in accordance with the relevant requirements and documents, strengthen the whole chain of management, and urge our employees to implement the prevention and control measures, and guide the public to do a good job of personal health protection, to help the epidemic effective peak and smooth transition, and effectively safeguard the smooth and orderly operation of the Spring Festival.

First, strengthen the organization of passenger flow guidance. Supervise operators to strengthen the disinfection and ventilation of passenger stations, optimize passenger flow organization, guide the public to queue in an orderly manner at the entrance, ticket windows and self-service ticketing equipment, security channels, ticket gates and other key parts, and disperse waiting and seating when conditions are available, while increasing the capacity of lines with high passenger flow in a timely manner to reduce the gathering of people.

Second, do a good job of public travel prevention publicity. Everyone is the first person responsible for his or her own health. Here, we advocate that the public should try to avoid traveling to areas with high epidemic prevalence, and the public in areas with high epidemic prevalence should also try to reduce travel and take the initiative to avoid traveling with symptoms, and everyone should try to avoid taking public transportation before the risk of infection is ruled out, or when symptoms such as fever appear. Passengers should also raise their awareness of self-protection during travel and strengthen protection during the entire trip. Wear a mask throughout the entire journey on public transportation and take the initiative to reduce gathering.

Third, we encourage the use of contactless services. We guide passenger transport operators to continuously improve ticketing services, actively promote the application of online ticketing, e-ticketing, self-service ticket inspection and other services, expand the scope of paperless and contactless services, accelerate the smooth connection between railroads, civil aviation and with urban rail transit and optimization of the security check process, reduce the waiting time for transfer and the gathering of people, and improve the efficiency of passenger transfer.

Fourth, strengthen the health management of employees. We urge operators to strengthen the health monitoring of employees, the implementation of symptom management, fever and other symptoms, the first time to report, stop operations, if necessary, carry out antigen or nucleic acid testing. Strengthen personal health protection, employees must wear masks during the shift and do hand hygiene. At the same time, we require that more contact with the social side, the flow of passengers in some hubs, highway service areas in the relevant service personnel, toll stations and other places of front-line employees, we advocate the “two points a line” lifestyle. At the same time, to wear N95/KN95 masks when on duty.

Fifth, the strict implementation of field station epidemic prevention measures. Urge operators to strengthen the daily public health management of relevant field stations, highway service areas, toll stations and some means of transportation, do a good job of environmental cleaning and disinfection, ventilation and air exchange, epidemic areas, to properly encrypt the frequency of cleaning and disinfection, ventilation and air exchange, passenger vehicles in time to open the windows for ventilation.

Sixth, effective response to the practitioners of large areas of infection. We should urge operators to strengthen the management of epidemic prevention of employees, and adhere to the principle of strict prudence in the induction of drivers to ensure that the physical condition is competent for safe driving requirements. The establishment of the implementation of the key positions rotational reserve system and cross-regional staff capacity deployment mechanism, to do enough to deal with the possibility of widespread infection in the workforce, to ensure that the staff succession in order, the service is constantly not chaotic.

He said, here also called around the care for the employees, with the conditions of the highway service areas, drivers’ homes, etc., to set up medical service points, equipped with fever medicine and other necessary epidemic prevention items, to provide the necessary rest places, to ensure that employees with symptoms can be timely medication, reasonable rest. In the next step, we will pay close attention to the development of the epidemic around the changes, adjust the relevant policies and security measures according to the situation, and guide the coordination of the epidemic prevention and control and the Spring Festival services to ensure the work.

This year’s Spring Festival started on January 7 and ended on February 15, a total of 40 days. Every year, the Spring Festival is a “big test” for the transport sector, and this year’s “test” may be more difficult.

According to the information provided at the meeting, compared with previous years, this year’s Spring Festival traffic peak and the peak of the epidemic overlap, is the most uncertain, the most complex situation in recent years, the most difficult challenges of the Spring Festival. Deputy head of the Spring Festival Task Force, Xu Chengguang, Vice Minister of Transport, said that, from a comprehensive perspective, this year’s Spring Festival has “three big one more” characteristics:.

First, a significant increase in passenger traffic. With the “Class B B” measures to speed up the implementation of cross-regional movement of people to accelerate the release, coupled with the epidemic over the past three years, the people’s accumulated back home for the New Year, visiting friends and relatives, tourism and other travel demand focused on the release of the Spring Festival passenger flow will run from a long-term low to a rapid recovery climb, the transport organization will be from a low-load state to a fully loaded state of operation . Preliminary analysis and research, the total passenger flow during the Spring Festival is about 2.095 billion passengers, an increase of 99.5% over the same period last year, recovering to 70.3% of the same period in 2019. From the composition of passenger flow, it is expected that the flow of visiting relatives accounts for about 55% of the Spring Festival passenger flow, work flow accounts for about 24%, tourism and business travel respectively account for about 10%, many colleges and universities have been released before the start of the Spring Festival, compared to previous years accounted for a relatively small proportion; self-driving, intercity carpooling, custom passenger transport and other travel ratio will further increase, the average daily flow of highway minibuses is about 26.2 million, an increase of 3.6% over the same period last year. From the spatial and temporal distribution, it is expected that before the festival to the major cities to the neighboring cities and the main labor export province migration, family flow, work flow overlap, the intensity of passenger flow has increased; after the festival to the main labor export province and small and medium-sized cities to the central city, the return passenger flow is relatively staggered, January 27 (the sixth day of the first month) and February 6 (the sixteenth day of the first month) before and after the return peak will appear two.

Second, the freight demand has increased significantly. In previous years, the Spring Festival is generally “passenger increase cargo decrease”, this year’s Spring Festival epidemic peak came one after another, all kinds of medical and epidemic prevention supplies, holiday supplies and energy, food and other key materials transportation needs this winter and next spring will have a large growth, especially in small and medium-sized cities, rural areas, logistics and distribution base is relatively weak, coupled with the front-line workers leaving work Returning to their hometowns and the possible emergence of a large area of infection, the lack of staff on duty, local areas may be poor end distribution problems, the coordination of the Spring Festival passenger services and transport logistics to ensure smooth facing greater pressure.

Third, the risk of infection of front-line personnel is greater. During the Spring Festival, the movement of people is intensive, freight logistics activities are frequent, efficient flow of people and logistics and the peak of the epidemic intertwined and overlapping, the risk of large-scale infection of front-line transport workers increased sharply, to ensure that passenger services are not interrupted, freight logistics without chain also faces greater pressure.

Since 2020, the repeated impact of the epidemic, transportation is facing a complex situation of intertwined and superimposed security risks and epidemic-derived risks. In particular, the industry has been operating at low load for a long time, the means of transport for a long period of time or low operation, the skills of employees appear rusty, coupled with the end of the year and the beginning of the year is traditionally a period of high incidence of safety accidents, low temperature, cold wave, rain, snow, freezing and other inclement weather during the Spring Festival is prone to more frequent, bringing greater challenges to safety production. Strengthen the management of production safety, prevent serious accidents, effective response to deal with emergencies, to ensure that the people travel safely, the need for transport departments at all levels to pay more hard work.