City plans standby team of 200 experts to monitor epidemic outbreak

Beijing will build a special city-level epidemiological investigation team of 200 members who will be on standby for dealing with any possible epidemic outbreak, according to a Beijing Daily report on March 18.

According to the city's public health conference held on Thursday, this team will ensure to form a core epidemiological investigation result within four hours when the epidemic occurs and complete the preliminary epidemiological information collection of the confirmed, suspected and asymptomatic cases within 24 hours.

The team will also be responsible for defining the specific area for the epidemic control and prevention measures and ensure to transfer close contacts of the cases to centralized quarantine locations within 12 hours.

As per the conference, the 200 members will be selected from 3,600 epidemiological investigation professionals in the city.