Inside China’s All-Out War on the Coronavirus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/health/coronavirus-china-aylward.html
Dr. Bruce Aylward, of the W.H.O., got a rare glimpse into Beijing’s campaign to stop the epidemic. Here’s what he saw.
As the leader of the World Health Organization team that visited China, Dr. Bruce Aylward feels he has been to the mountaintop — and has seen what’s possible.
During a two-week visit in early February, Dr. Aylward saw how China rapidly suppressed the coronavirus outbreak that had engulfed Wuhan, and was threatening the rest of the country.
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China’s counterattack can be replicated, Dr. Aylward said, but it will require speed, money, imagination and political courage.
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I know there’s suspicion, but at every testing clinic we went to, people would say, “It’s not like it was three weeks ago.” It peaked at 46,000 people asking for tests a day; when we left, it was 13,000. Hospitals had empty beds.
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How did the Chinese reorganize their medical response?
First, they moved 50 percent of all medical care online so people didn’t come in. Have you ever tried to reach your doctor on Friday night? Instead, you contacted one online. If you needed prescriptions like insulin or heart medications, they could prescribe and deliver it.
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How good were the severe and critical care?
China is really good at keeping people alive. Its hospitals looked better than some I see here in Switzerland. We’d ask, “How many ventilators do you have?” They’d say “50.” Wow! We’d say, “How many ECMOs?” They’d say “five.” The team member from the Robert Koch Institute said, “Five? In Germany, you get three, maybe. And just in Berlin.”
(ECMOs are extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines, which oxygenate the blood when the lungs fail.)
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What about the nonmedical response?
It was nationwide. There was this tremendous sense of, “We’ve got to help Wuhan,” not “Wuhan got us into this.” Other provinces sent 40,000 medical workers, many of whom volunteered.
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How did people in Wuhan eat if they had to stay indoors?
Fifteen million people had to order food online. It was delivered. Yes, there were some screw-ups. But one woman said to me: “Every now and again there’s something missing from a package, but I haven’t lost any weight.”
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How did technology play a role?
They’re managing massive amounts of data, because they’re trying to trace every contact of 70,000 cases. When they closed the schools, really, just the buildings closed. The schooling moved online.
Contact tracers had on-screen forms. If you made a mistake, it flashed yellow. It was idiot-proof.
We went to Sichuan, which is vast but rural. They’d rolled out 5G. We were in the capital, at an emergency center with huge screens. They had a problem understanding one cluster. On one screen, they got the county headquarters. Still didn’t solve it.
So they got the field team. Here’s this poor team leader 500 kilometers away, and he gets a video call on his phone, and it’s the governor.
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Isn’t it possible only because China is an autocracy?
Journalists also say, “Well, they’re only acting out of fear of the government,” as if it’s some evil fire-breathing regime that eats babies. I talked to lots of people outside the system — in hotels, on trains, in the streets at night.
They’re mobilized, like in a war, and it’s fear of the virus that was driving them. They really saw themselves as on the front lines of protecting the rest of China. And the world.
Very good article and worthy to read ...
