China Daily: 

The difficulties of getting medical services in some lockdown areas have become a problem recently. I would like to know how to ensure the smooth operation of both pandemic control and medical services at the same time? Thank you.

Li Bin:

Thank you for your question. Coordinating relations between the pandemic prevention and control and regular medical services and ensuring people's needs for services are crucial to protect people's health and well-being. During the pandemic prevention and control process, it has always been our most concerning issue to maintain medical treatment in good order to deliver consistent medical services for the public. 

Currently, the COVID-19 epidemic features a combination of sporadic cases in a few places and cluster outbreaks in some parts across the country. The prevention and control situation remains grim. Some areas were put under closed-off management, affecting people's medical treatment. Given this problem, the NHC has put forward precise requirements, made comprehensive arrangements, and provided guidelines for specific local situations. Local authorities have also taken adequate measures to do everything possible to ensure the public's medical needs. To solve this problem, we have mainly focused on the four points:

First, we must ensure the timely treatment of acute and critical patients. According to the deployment of the NHC, all localities are required to designate hospitals for those whose health codes turn "yellow" and open "cloud clinics." For the critically ill, buffer zones for emergency treatment, first-aid centers, operating rooms, and wards should be put into use in a timely manner when their nucleic acid test results are yet unknown. Medics should strictly implement the first consultation responsibility system and ensure the treatment of acute and critical patients, offer timely and effective treatment while protecting themselves, and should not refuse patients at any excuse to delay the treatment.

Second, we must meet the medical needs of special groups. Local epidemic prevention and control departments should conduct survey and develop a clear picture of the situation of patients with demand for hemodialysis, tumor radiotherapy or chemotherapy, as well as pregnant women and newborns in areas under closed-off management, so as to better provide continuous medical services. Community-level health care institutions should provide medical services for patients with chronic diseases by issuing long-term prescriptions and other means.

Third, we must guarantee access to essential medical services in areas with the resurgence of COVID-19. During the epidemic prevention and control period, we have raised the level of coordination, strengthened the inter-department coordination, and set up emergency helplines such as 120 and convenient service channels to ensure that the public can "connect to the emergency center and receive timely treatment." The closed-off management areas and restrictive control areas should constantly improve the operation mechanism of medical service management under the emergency state. Expert teams providing consultation and evaluation to needy people should be arranged. For those who need to go out for medical treatment, point-to-point transportation, and closed-loop management should be arranged to ensure residents in medical demand can leave the community and get into the hospital.

Fourth, we have coordinated epidemic prevention and control and medical services within medical institutions. The pandemic monitoring and early warning efforts in medical institutions have been further strengthened, and the procedures for handling public health emergencies have been improved. The emergency plan is immediately activated once confirmed cases are identified. While responding to emergencies timely and effectively, it is necessary to report to the local disease prevention and control departments to coordinate pandemic prevention and control in hospitals and society. The medical institutions where cases are identified cannot be shut down due to dealing with the pandemic. After taking closed-off management and restrictive control measures, the emergency response mechanism should be initiated swiftly to make sure that the key departments, including emergency, dialysis, operation, intensive care unit, and delivery, can continue to function. We must ensure critical patients can get timely treatment to minimize the impact of epidemic response on normal medical services in medical institutions. Thank you.