China's Fight Against COVID-19: What We Have Done and What We Should Do Next?

  1. Sixiang Cheng
  2. Yuxin Zhao
  3. Atipatsa Chiwanda Kaminga
  4. Xinping Zhang
  5. Huilan Xu

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Abstract

Chinese government conducted unprecedented massive public health prevention interventions at the national level, which have effectively contained the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections. Specifically, the outbreak in Wuhan has been effectively controlled. Meanwhile, the Chinese efforts to contain the virus have been widely recognized. Even the World Health Organization has praised the efforts of the Chinese government and advised other countries to learn from China's experience in the fight against COVID-19. However, the measures that have been conducted by China to effectively prevent the spread of COVID 19 in the country have not been rigorously analyzed. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the characteristics of China's control and prevention strategies, and identify the elements that changed the epidemiological curve of rapidly rising new confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Methods

Public health intervention measures and their effects on the spread of COVID-19 in terms of daily newly confirmed and cumulative cases were collected between January 20, 2020, and March 5. Notices of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism for COVID-19 of the State Council on Implementing Measures in Hubei were collected. Information obtained by relevant important documents and announcements was collected from the official website of the Chinese government. Additionally, from other media platforms, news, articles, and reviews were used to explain the intervention measure. Thus, using these data, we performed a retrospective description of the intervention strategies at three stages.

Results

The Chinese government adopted non-pharmacological interventions measures (NPIs) timely and efficiently. On February 20, the declining epidemic trend in China indicated that the three strictest disease prevention and control strategies issued by the Hubei Government had contributed to a smooth decline in the spread of the epidemic.

Conclusions

The NPIs taken by China play a decisive role to control the spread of novel coronavirus outbreaks. Further research and action are needed to ensure a sufficiently sensitive surveillance system and strong response mechanism, including the establishment of a highly accessible laboratory network, maintenance of awareness of both primary healthcare providers and the public, and regular training and exercise of local Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and general practitioners in the community-level.

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  1. Version published to 10.3389/fpubh.2022.548056
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.28.20046086: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical approval: This project was not applicable for institutional review board approval because it used publicly accessible information and data. 2.2.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Data as extracted and tabulated in Excel 2010 Microsoft and make data analysis.
    Excel
    suggested: None

    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 reduce morbidity and mortality, the Chinese government has adopted non-drug intervention measures, namely, social isolation, medical observation, contact limitation, self-protection, the combination of these traditional and modern public health intervention measures, the course of the epidemic, and the epidemic curve. As the WHO leader Bruce Aylward said at the COVID-19 news conference of February 24 in Beijing[4]: “This is one of the biggest successes of China’s response to the outbreak. The past month, for example, there were more than 1,800 epidemiological investigation teams in Wuhan, with at least 5 persons in each group, tracking thousands of close contacts every day. It is through painstaking efforts that the vast majority of identified close contacts were tracked down and their health monitored. These remarkable results have not come easily because of the epidemiology of these curves. Behind it in every line is an important policy decision for China’s leaders to guide the public to conform to these great decisions, which was not easy.

    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

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.28.20046086v1 on medRxiv