China's fight against COVID-19: What we have done and what we should do next?

Sixiang Cheng; Yuxin Zhao; Atipatsa Chiwanda Kaminga; Pingxin Zhang; Huilan Xu

An unprecedented outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, emerged in December 2019. A novel coronavirus was identified as the causative agent and was subsequently termed SARS-CoV-2 by the World Health Organization (WHO). Epidemic disease quickly spread across 31 provinces and regions. As of 23:00 CET on March 5, a total of 98,067 new confirmed cases have been reported globally, with deaths of 3,281. A total of 17,637 cases have been confirmed in 78 countries outside China. [1] The new coronavirus outbreak has surpassed the severity of SARS in 2003. [2, 3] The outbreak of virus coincided with China's Spring Festival travel peak, and to curb the spread of the disease, the Chinese government launched unprecedented public health intervention measures, such as shutting down Wuhan transportation, extending the legal holiday, mass isolation, strict enforcement of quarantine of all contacts, and canceling all public gatherings and health public to abide by hygienic practices. To reduce the flow of people, the health monitoring of returning residents has been conducted at the nationwide level. As of 16:00 clock on February 28, Dr. Wan'nian Liang, chief of the National Health Commission's institutional reform department and head of the Chinese expert panel, said: The virus outbreak in Wuhan is curbed basic. The number of new confirmed cases per day declined from a high peak of 3,900 cases on 13 February to 323 cases on 27 February. The number of newly cured cases has exceeded the number of newly confirmed cases for eight consecutive days since February 20. The proportion of severe cases declined from 31.6% to 22.4% from February 11 to February 27. The death rate has fallen from a peak of 9.0% on January 16th to 4.4% now. [4] As the WHO leader Bruce Aylward said at a COVID-19 news conference on February 24, "China's made comprehensive non-pharmaceutical interventions, which have effectively prevented the transmission of the virus, providing important lessons for the global response to new virus" [5] . This is an unprecedented effort, and it surpasses previous efforts to combat SARS." However, there is no doubt that no other countries can follow China's current example. [6] In the global spread background, from the perspective of social epidemiology, this paper aims to summarize these detailed intervention measures taken by the Chinese government and explain how the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei Province was effectively controlled by these public health interventions measures. We also improve the public health system in the future by summarizing these lessons from this outbreak.