Deputy proposes way to share pandemic successes

Zhang Boli, a deputy to the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, proposed that the country should enhance its precise prevention and control of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks when implementing its dynamic zero-COVID policy.

The dynamic zero-COVID policy, which emphasizes prompt control of domestic outbreaks, has enabled the country to maintain "a world-leading position in COVID-19 control", according to a work report issued by the National Development and Reform Commission on Saturday.

Zhang, 74, who has served as a deputy for 15 years and is now honorary president of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said the State Council should create special task forces for different sectors — pandemic control management, medicine, science and technology, transportation, public security, industry, tourism, commerce and communications — to summarize the experience in those sectors since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020.

Provincial-level pandemic control authorities should lead their task forces, to summarize the experience at the provincial and city levels, Zhang suggested.

"The country should systematically summarize its experience in fighting against the pandemic in the fields of prevention and control, medical treatment, resource supply, community service and news communication to help map out better strategies and plans to continue its efforts to prevent the spread of the virus in the future," he suggested.

He added that cities or provinces with useful experience in pandemic control should also summarize their strategies in light of their distinctive features, such as specific advantages for tourism, ports or urban development, so that similar cities or areas can benefit.

"There were more than 20 large outbreaks resulted from crowds gathering in different areas on the Chinese mainland in 2021, except the Tibet autonomous region, which had no confirmed cases," he noted. "As such, after each battle, we should develop new methods and mechanisms to increase efficiency in the fight."

For example, Tianjin took swift action to control the country's first large, locally transmitted Omicron variant outbreak early this year, and TCM played a pivotal role in treatment.

"Guangzhou completed 28 million nucleic acid tests, within 10 days in May, and after three rounds of tests of its entire population, the city's pandemic was curbed," he said.

Summarizing all the above experience could make a great contributions to the country's overall pandemic control and improve treatment efficiency in combining Western and Chinese medicines, Zhang said.