Early Surveillance and Public Health Emergency Responses Between Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 and Avian Influenza in China: A Case-Comparison Study

  1. Tiantian Zhang
  2. Qian Wang
  3. Ying Wang
  4. Ge Bai
  5. Ruiming Dai
  6. Li Luo

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Abstract

Background: Since the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been a worldwide pandemic, the early surveillance and public health emergency disposal are considered crucial to curb this emerging infectious disease. However, studies of COVID-19 on this topic in China are relatively few.

Methods: A case-comparison study was conducted using a set of six key time nodes to form a reference framework for evaluating early surveillance and public health emergency disposal between H7N9 avian influenza (2013) in Shanghai and COVID-19 in Wuhan, China.

Findings: A report to the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, China, for the first hospitalized patient was sent after 6 and 20 days for H7N9 avian influenza and COVID-19, respectively. In contrast, the pathogen was identified faster in the case of COVID-19 than in the case of H7N9 avian influenza (12 vs. 31 days). The government response to COVID-19 was 10 days later than that to avian influenza. The entire process of early surveillance and public health emergency disposal lasted 5 days longer in COVID-19 than in H7N9 avian influenza (46 vs. 41 days).

Conclusions: The identification of the unknown pathogen improved in China between the outbreaks of avian influenza and COVID-19. The longer emergency disposal period in the case of COVID-19 could be attributed to the government's slower response to the epidemic. Improving public health emergency management could lessen the adverse social effects of emerging infectious diseases and public health crisis in the future.

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  1. Version published to 10.3389/fpubh.2021.629295
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.29.20046490: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    To the best of our knowledge, this was one of the few studies conducted in China to compare the strengths and weaknesses of public health emergency disposal between COVID-19 and H7N9 avian influenza. In this case-comparative study, the time taken to detect unknown pathogens had improved between the outbreaks of H7N9 avian influenza and COVID-19, whereas the time taken for hospitals to report a case to the local CDC and the government’s emergency response was significantly slow. In this study, we mainly investigated three crucial periods that influence the efficiency of emergency management to public health crises. During the emergency response process for H7N9 avian influenza (2013) in Shanghai, the maximum time was taken to technically identify and recheck the pathogen. The technical identification of pathogen took 24 days and the rechecking took 7 days, which accounted for 76% of the whole emergency process. In contrast, the time taken to technically identify and recheck the pathogen in the case of COVID-19 was reduced to just 12 days, accounting for 24% of the whole emergency process. Laboratory identification was 19 days faster in the case of COVID-19 than in the case of H7N9 avian influenza, whereas the total disposal time was 5 days longer in the case of COVID-19 than in the case of H7N9 avian influenza. This could be attributed to the decrease in the reporting periods of certain hospitals and the increase in responding periods of the local governments. The time taken b...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.29.20046490v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.29.20046490v1 on medRxiv