National Health Commission: fever clinic and general outpatient emergency room visits are now steadily falling back

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Fu Wei, Ombudsman of the Department of Primary Health Care of the National Health and Wellness Commission: Since the monitoring was launched on December 21, 2022, the number of visits to fever clinics and general outpatient clinics in township health centers and community health service centers has generally shown a trend of first increasing and then decreasing, and is now falling steadily.

Related reports: Primary health care institutions are running smoothly overall, and the number of fever clinic visits during the Spring Festival is at a low level

On January 30, at a press conference on the State Council’s joint prevention and control mechanism, Fu Wei, the ombudsman of the Department of Primary Health Care of the National Health and Wellness Commission, introduced that primary health care institutions are the first line of defense for epidemic prevention and control and medical treatment, and are facing increased mobility and more people returning to their hometowns during the Spring Festival. In order to better grasp the operation of primary health care institutions and the epidemic situation around the country, the National Health Care Commission insists on the daily monitoring, daily dispatch and daily reporting system of medical institutions. During the Spring Festival, urban and rural primary health care institutions have been operating normally, providing fever clinic outpatient services.

Fu Wei said that since the monitoring was launched on December 21, 2022, the number of visits to fever clinics and general emergency outpatient clinics in township health centers and community health service centers has shown an overall trend of first increasing and then decreasing, and is now falling steadily. During the Chinese New Year period from January 21 to 27, the number of consultations in fever clinics was at a low level, with the lowest number of consultations on the first day of the year, and rebounded to a certain extent afterwards, but it was always lower than the number of consultations before the festival, about 40% less. Compared with the peak on Dec. 23 last year, it was down 94%. On January 27, the number of general outpatient and emergency visits to primary care institutions was 2,036,000, a decrease of nearly 30% compared to the pre-holiday period, and about 44% of the peak number of general outpatient and emergency visits on December 29 last year.

The operation of primary health care institutions as a whole is smooth, and can meet the needs of the masses for fever treatment and other disease visits. Fu Wei introduced that during the Spring Festival, localities actively do a good job in the referral and transfer of key populations and seriously ill patients, expanding the 120 transfer capacity, increasing the number of telephone seats, as well as forming non-emergency transfer fleets to ensure the transfer needs of patients. Higher-level medical institutions also established green channels for referrals and simplified the referral process for serious patients to ensure timely treatment. Overall, the medical treatment and epidemic prevention and control work in primary health care institutions during the Spring Festival was smooth and orderly.