Beijing, 4 April (ZXS) -- China's official response to hot topics such as the national epidemic situation and the "May 26st" epidemic prevention plan
China News Agency reporter Li Chun
Discussions about the coronavirus pandemic have recently increased in China, how should we view the current national epidemic situation? With the May Day holiday approaching and the public's willingness to travel, how should the epidemic prevention work be deployed during the festival? The joint prevention and control mechanism of China's State Council held a press conference on the 26th to respond to the above hot topics.
The epidemic situation is slowly rising in some areas
Talking about the current national epidemic situation, He Qinghua, a first-level inspector of the Department of Communication and Prevention of the National Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention, pointed out that the national epidemic prevention and control situation is generally stable, and the epidemic situation in various places is in a state of local sporadic distribution.
However, he also mentioned that the national fever clinic monitoring data shows that after mid-April, the number of positive people and the proportion of positive positives in a single day have increased slightly. Experts believe that with the passage of time and the decline of the level of immune protection in some populations in China, the epidemic situation in some areas has begun to rise slowly. "In general, experts believe that a large-scale epidemic in the country is less likely in the short term."
On the other hand, China has also detected the import of the Omicron variant XBB.1.16, which is known as "Arcturus".
According to Chen Cao, a researcher at the Institute of Virology of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the XBB variant has an absolute advantage in China's recent imported cases, and the proportion of XBB variant in local cases has also increased significantly. "As of 4 April, 22 cases of XBB.57.1 and its subclades have been detected in China among the indigenous cases."
As for the transmissibility and pathogenicity of the variant, Chen Cao also said that WHO believes that the current evidence shows that the global epidemic risk of XBB.1.16 is lower than that of XBB.1.5 and other circulating variants. "No increase in disease severity has been reported compared to other Omicron subclades."
Optimize and adjust prevention and control measures
At the same time, China is still continuously optimizing relevant epidemic prevention and control measures. For example, the State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism issued the "Vaccination Work Plan for Responding to the Recent Coronavirus Infection Epidemic" earlier this month, which mentioned the need to "fill the gap in immunization levels." ”
Chen Cao said that based on the current vaccination or infection of various groups of people, "filling the gap in immunity level" is mainly to enable people who meet the conditions for this vaccination to achieve better immune protection by increasing the number of antigen stimulations.
Another change is the new version of the public mask wearing guidelines released in the middle of this month. He Qinghua said that the new version of the guidelines focuses on strengthening the guidance for the public to wear masks, and puts forward classification suggestions for common scenarios closely related to the public's production, life, work, study, etc., which should be worn, recommended to wear, and can not wear masks.
Regarding whether masks need to be worn in scenarios other than the recommendations, He Qinghua also pointed out that the public can determine according to local epidemic prevention and control regulations and personal health conditions to achieve the goal of protecting personal health and avoiding the spread of diseases.
Deploy holiday epidemic prevention work
With the rapid and steady turn of China's epidemic prevention and control, the public's willingness to travel is expected to be very strong during the upcoming May Day holiday. Han Jinghua, deputy director of the Department of Transportation Services of the Ministry of Transport, said that it is expected that the volume of operating passenger traffic and self-driving trips will hit a new high since the May Day holiday in 2020.
In response to the epidemic prevention and control work during the festival, medical treatment, transportation, cultural tourism and other aspects have been deployed.
"We require hospitals above the second level to set up fever clinics, so that all fever clinics should be opened and set up." Guo Yanhong, director of the Department of Medical Emergency Response of the National Health Commission, pointed out that it is also necessary to prepare medical resources, especially treatment beds, equipment and facilities.
Han Jinghua said that the transportation department will optimize epidemic prevention and control measures, and do a good job in public health management and cleaning, disinfection, ventilation and ventilation of passenger terminals and transportation vehicles; Strengthen health monitoring of transport workers to avoid going to work with illness; Strengthen passenger flow guidance, timely increase entry and security check channels as needed, orderly guide passengers to disperse and wait for trains, and reduce the gathering of people.
Li Xiaoyong, deputy director of the Department of Market Management of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, also mentioned that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released the forecast of tourism hotspots in May based on indicators such as online search volume, travel agent procurement volume, and tourist booking, guiding relevant regional cultural and tourism administrative departments to analyze the work situation in advance, strengthen advance preparation, and coordinate various work such as epidemic prevention and control, safe production, service quality and market order. (End)