Shanghai eyes to become one of world’s top cities for public health

Shanghai is eyeing to bolster its ability to cope with major epidemics and public health emergencies and pledged to emerge as one of the safest cities for public health by 2025.

The city has released guidelines which said it will establish a unified and efficient public health emergency command information system, along with a smart decision-making platform to prevent and control epidemic spread, the Shanghai government said Wednesday.

Under this system, a public health monitoring and warning mechanism will be adopted to monitor new infectious diseases and diseases of unknown origins at the earliest.

The city will also build internet hospitals, improve its public health big data resource platform and developing Internet of Things in healthcare.

Every time Shanghai faced major epidemic and public health emergencies such as SARS outbreak in 2003, H1N1 outbreak in 2009, and H7N9 in 2013, Shanghai has dealt appropriately to combat such crisis, thanks to its sound management, Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai's coronavirus medical expert team, said during a press conference on Wednesday in Shanghai, adding that the city's public health system will improve each time it grapples with an epidemic.

So far, Shanghai's approaches in battling against the COVID-19 virus that has infected more than 80,000 people and killed over 3,000 nationwide, has been successful, thanks to its "closed-loop" system.

Under this policy, the city adopts an early diagnosis and isolation of coronavirus patients, and tracks down the close contacts and quarantines them at the earliest, in order to prevent the epidemic spread, Zhang said, adding that he also shared this tactic with some US health experts. Eventually, all the COVID-19 patients will be treated in the designated hospitals.

So far, among the 204 imported cases in the city, 78 have been discharged upon recovery; and no new local COVID-19 cases were reported in Shanghai, according to the Shanghai Health Commission.

Source: Global Times

On April 1, 2020, near a subway station on Nanjing West Road in Shanghai, an intelligent robot provides no-wash disinfectant to pedestrians.   Photo by Wang Gang/People’s Daily Online