The authors are with the Department of Health Policy and Management, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, GA.
Am J Public Health. 2020 Aug;110(8):1145-1148. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2020.305732. Epub 2020 May 21.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 virus outbreak to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020. Although the Chinese central government implemented significant measures to control the epidemic from January 20 within China, the crisis had already escalated dramatically.Between December 1, 2019, and January 20, 2020, a total of 51 days passed before the Chinese central government took full control. Several major factors combined to cause what had been in retrospect a clear break in the governmental information chain between December 1 and January 20. The management of this epidemic also illustrated key organizational limitations of the current Chinese health system, in particular provincial-level senior officials' lack of knowledge and awareness of potential public health risks and insufficient emergency medical material storage and logistics arrangements.We review the specific disease control actions that the Chinese central government took between January 20 and January 27, the major reasons why the governmental information chain had broken before January 20, and key structural health system limitations highlighted as the epidemic expanded.
世界卫生组织（WHO）于 2020 年 1 月 30 日宣布 COVID-19 病毒爆发为国际关注的突发公共卫生事件。尽管中国中央政府从 2020 年 1 月 20 日起在中国境内实施了重大措施来控制疫情，但危机已经急剧升级。从 2019 年 12 月 1 日至 2020 年 1 月 20 日，中国中央政府完全控制疫情共过去了 51 天。在 12 月 1 日至 1 月 20 日期间，有几个主要因素共同导致了政府信息链的明显中断。对疫情的管理也暴露出当前中国卫生系统的关键组织局限性，特别是省级高级官员对潜在公共卫生风险的了解和认识不足，以及应急医疗物资储存和物流安排不足。我们回顾了中国中央政府在 1 月 20 日至 1 月 27 日之间采取的具体疾病控制措施，以及在 1 月 20 日之前政府信息链中断的主要原因，以及随着疫情的扩大而凸显的关键结构性卫生系统局限性。
