Liu Lei, president of the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen, the only designated hospital treating COVID-19 patients in Shenzhen, ensured locals that the city is a very safe place thanks to the government's timely prevention and control of the outbreak, at an online talk organized by Guan Shanyue Art Museum on Saturday.
During the two-hour talk, he stressed several times that Shenzhen is very safe now because the city's health commission launched a joint prevention and control effort as early as Jan. 14 and started body temperature monitoring at the airport, ferry terminals, railway stations and bus stations from Jan. 16.
"Shenzhen's response was much earlier than many other cities. Of the total 461 COVID-19 cases in our hospital, 80 percent were infections from other cities or countries, 11 percent had close contact with people from the infected areas, 7.6 percent had contact with previously confirmed cases, and the reason for the remaining few is unknown. So, the timely prevention and control ensured Shenzhen's safety," he said.
According to Liu, since the SARS outbreak in 2003, his hospital has had trainings and drills in prevention and control of respiratory infectious diseases every November and December. Measures include stocking medical supplies, treating patients in designated wards, controlling hospital-acquired infections and carrying out pathogenic monitoring. On Jan. 2 and 8 this year, his hospital launched trainings and drills on the then-unidentified type of pneumonia.
"On Jan. 31, we received 60 COVID-19 cases in a single day. From the first case received Jan. 11 to the peak, pressure among our staff grew quickly. So we built an emergency building, which has 1,000 beds including 800 that are negative-pressure, in 20 days."
Meanwhile, the city government also supported the hospital by dispatching ventilators, ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machines and professionals, which eliminated the medical staff's worries. "Now we have 90 ventilators and seven ECMO machines and our efforts were acclaimed by the WHO when they visited Shenzhen in February."
Apart from prevention and treatment, the public hospital, which has a P3 lab (biological safety protection third-level laboratory), is also doing research on the virus. Its emergency building will be used for the National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases. And on April 2, it established a public health and emergency management institute at the Southern University of Science and Technology on the campus to cultivate management talent.
"Viruses are tricky and try to survive under any circumstances, so all viruses, including COVID-19, will have variations. What concerns us most is whether COVID-19's variations will cause a higher rate of morbidity and be more highly infectious," said Liu.
Some netizens aired their concern over back-to-school children and asymptomatic patients. Liu said that the 60-plus COVID-19 child patients in his hospital were all mild cases and recovered quickly but since the research is still ongoing, he suggested back-to-school children strictly follow preventive measures. "As for asymptomatic patients, we are still researching on the amount of the virus they shed. They are definitely infectious but their morbidity is not very high, so wearing face masks and practicing social distancing is still necessary for everyone currently."