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Chinese health authorities began evaluating millions of people in Wuhan, after the city that was once the center of the coronavirus outbreak reported a small group of infections.
Officials from the various districts were told to begin evaluating key groups of residents who had not yet been evaluated and to complete the work within 10 days.
Infectious disease epidemics behave in different ways, but the 1918 flu pandemic that killed more than 50 million people is considered a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, the latter being more severe than the first. It has been replicated, albeit milder, in subsequent influenza pandemics.
How and why multi-wave outbreaks occur, and how subsequent waves of infection can be prevented, has become a staple of epidemiological model studies and pandemic preparedness, which have looked at everything from social behavior and health policy up to vaccination and the accumulation of community immunity. , also known as collective immunity.
Is there evidence that the coronavirus returns in a second wave?
This is being watched very carefully. Without a vaccine, and without widespread immunity to the new disease, the Singapore experience is raising an alarm, which has seen a sudden resurgence of infections despite being praised for its early management of the outbreak.
Although Singapore instituted a strong contact locating system for its general population, the disease reappeared in tight dormitory accommodation used by thousands of foreign workers with inadequate hygiene facilities and shared dining facilities.
Singapore’s experience, while highly specific, has demonstrated the disease’s ability to reappear in force in places where people are very close and its ability to exploit any weaknesses in established public health regimes to counter it.
What are the experts concerned about?
Conventional wisdom among scientists suggests that second waves of resistant infections occur after treatment and isolation capacity are depleted. In this case, the concern is that the social and political consensus behind the closings is being overtaken by public frustration and the urgent need to reopen economies.
The threat decreases when the population’s susceptibility to the disease falls below a certain threshold or when widespread vaccination is available.
Generally speaking, the proportion of susceptible and immune individuals in a population at the end of a wave determines the potential magnitude of a subsequent wave. The concern right now is that with a vaccine still months away, and the actual rate of infection is only guessed, populations worldwide remain highly vulnerable to both the resurgence and subsequent waves.
Peter Beaumont
The methods seem to vary in different places and there has been confusion about the time frame and requirements about who is tested.
Wuhan will conduct tests on all city dwellers, with the aim of obtaining a clear number of asymptomatic cases as businesses and schools are reopened. The state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday that priority would be given to residents who had not been screened before, to people in residential complexes who had previous cases and old or densely populated farms.
In a residential block, more than 2,000 people were examined Tuesday, but the doctors allegedly ran out of labels and reagents, complicating efforts to reach each resident before 8 p.m.
A video posted on Weibo, the microblogging site, showed long lines of residents meandering along a path, waiting to enter temporary tents set up inside the grounds. Please go home and wait for the news. We will let you know when we have the results as soon as possible, and then you can come back, ”a volunteer tells residents.
A 22-year-old resident in the Wuchang district told The Guardian that she and her neighbors were advised to register through WeChat, or at the health check if they did not have a smartphone.
The woman, Ms. Huang, said she did not think it was too much of a problem for the community to cooperate with the mass testing, but there were some complaints, including overcrowding at the test sites.
She said she was “used to all sorts of one-size-fits-all policies,” but there was too much “unnecessary formalism” in the processes and could be more efficient.
“A large-scale outbreak is unlikely to happen because as long as there are new cases, district leaders will be removed,” he said, referring to the building manager at the center of this week’s outbreak.
“I don’t think there will be another blockade because they are more concerned with economic development and will not stop production. The people of Wuhan pay great attention to the virus. Most people know how serious it is, and the epidemic prevention job is well done. ”
Other images on social media showed people lined up outside closed storefronts, waiting to sit at a table where a health worker in a hazardous materials suit would provide the test outdoors.
“This is a good thing. It is a way of being responsible to others and to yourself,” a 40-year-old man told Agence France-Presse (AFP) after taking the test.
A resident of another community posted a notice on social media directing everyone over the age of six who had not been screened before to bring IDs and masks to the open plaza on Wednesday. More than 1,000 people, residential block by residential block, would be evaluated at the end of the day, he said.
Ananth Krishnan
(@ananthkrishnan)Waiting in line to get tested in Wuhan. The entire city of 11 million is being examined in a 10-day period. pic.twitter.com/UiEMry9Hr4
There have been reports of some concerns. “I know that this plan that requires the city to do large-scale testing serves as a basic safeguard. I wasn’t planning to get tested, “a woman who did not give her name told AFP.
“But the security measures inside are really bad. [People] they are too close and the person who performed the test handled many samples of people, but I didn’t see him wash his hands. “
A city government statement said Wuhan had recently returned to normal after months of confinement, but “infectious diseases have their own rules.”
Wuhan evaluated 1.79 million people between April 1 and May 13, according to Reuters calculations of the health commission’s data.
On Thursday, Feng Zijian, deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and a member of the state council’s expert group, said the expanded tests would identify more asymptomatic cases.
“The spread of the virus is a dynamic process,” said Feng. “It is not easy to find all infected people or sources of infection at once, at any given time.” There was no need to test nationally, he said.
Additional reports from Lillian Yang and agencies
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