Early warning of disease pandemic, conversation with Zhang Wenhong: Establishing a real-time monitoring network for hospital networks

"Green China" talks to figures of the times, spreads the spirit of innovation, and pays tribute to the power of science.

After the COVID-19 epidemic has ravaged the world, health issues have become people's primary concern about people's livelihood and well-being. In the "14th Five-Year Plan", comprehensive promotion of the construction of a healthy China is placed in an extremely important position. Improving fair and accessible systems of continuous prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, health promotion and other health services has become a top priority, but it is by no means easy.

In the post-epidemic era, how should China adhere to the prevention-oriented approach and establish a comprehensive, full-cycle health service system? With the policy support of the "Healthy China 2030" Outline that emphasizes innovation, how can medical innovation find a different development path? How should China establish a stable public health investment mechanism and strengthen the construction of its talent team? In the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, the rapid transformation of medical results is crucial, which requires both government policy support and a market-oriented industrial investment platform. Compared with the transformation of medical achievements in the United States and Europe, there is still a big gap in the transformation of domestic medical achievements. How should we solve the problem? With these questions, host Li Ce walked into Huashan Hospital and had a Q&A appointment with Zhang Wenhong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, director of the National Medical Center for Infectious Diseases, and director of the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Infectious Diseases and Biosafety Emergency Response.

Zhang Wenhong believes that the global epidemic prevention and control system urgently needs systemic changes and international coordination to avoid the occurrence of new global disease pandemics. From partial repair to systemic change, it not only relies on new productive forces to empower medical technology innovation, but also requires the integration of forces from multiple fields such as medicine, public health, sociology, economics, and international relations. In addition, with the development of new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, the transformation of scientific research results is crucial. In the future, new technologies will be widely used in epidemic monitoring, early warning and prevention and control systems to improve the efficiency and accuracy of treatment. It is worth noting that a clinical diagnosis and treatment system for infectious diseases based in the super-large city of Shanghai is under continuous construction. This system will clarify the construction standards and implementation plans of diagnosis and treatment centers at different levels, refine the responsibilities and tasks of each diagnosis and treatment center, formulate efficient collaboration plans, and form a process-based and comprehensive process for hierarchical referral, coordinated treatment, and talent training in all fields. Integrated operating system.

The guest of this episode Zhang Wenhong and the host Li Ce are at the recording site

The construction of industry-university-research system is a step-by-step process

Li Ce: After three years of COVID-19, will the government establish a system or scientific platform for early warning, early diagnosis, and early intervention of infectious diseases to deal with new epidemic diseases that may occur in the future? Especially in the field of science and technology, big data, AI and other fields have achieved rapid development.

Zhang Wenhong: After the epidemic, the world has done a lot of work to prepare for the overall pandemic. Especially in January 2024, at the Davos Economic Forum, the WHO once again proposed that we must deal with future pandemics, including the so-called X disease, which means that an epidemic like the new crown may not occur in human history. It's the first time, maybe it wasn't the first time.

We have experienced many major epidemics since the 1918 influenza until now, but a super epidemic like this may be the new coronavirus and the 1918 influenza. Therefore, in 2018, scientists and relevant governments around the world had already held a discussion. But even after studying it, I still feel that there is something lacking in terms of preparation.

This includes how to prepare early warning and surveillance for a pandemic, as well as how to make comprehensive preparations for drugs and vaccines. First, of course, it is an early warning, because if the early warning is delayed, there may be no chance when a pandemic occurs. It has already caused a tsunami-like epidemic, and it will be very difficult to control it at this time. Therefore, we generally believe that a good early warning system can allow enough space for subsequent innovations to provide opportunities for timely drugs and vaccines. Therefore, early warning and innovation are two inseparable aspects of the same problem. Therefore, since then, including during this year's two sessions, many representatives in China have proposed how to make the entire monitoring, detection, and early warning more comprehensive, in-depth, and multi-dimensional based on the original disease control and surveillance, and at the same time, integrate information get through. Therefore, on this basis, as the National Communication Medicine Center, we have also done some exploration in the early stage, that is, through the support of the state, we have established some information unification for many hospitals in China for clinical units, and Improve clinical testing capabilities and establish a first-hand early warning network. This network is also designed to be a multi-level early warning system focusing on the future and the country. It also includes the current detection of underground sewage to see if some popular viruses or the peak of the current epidemic has gone down or risen, etc.

After the entire detection and monitoring network is established from the environment to the current hospital and then to the community, we will always detect the epidemic at the first time, so that we can carry out prevention and control at an early stage. After early prevention and control, a relatively large space will be left.

In the first stage of the new crown epidemic, China controlled it very well, which opened up a good space for everyone to do research and development later. It's just that on a global scale, during the last COVID-19, our entire global research and development, including drugs and vaccines, have made great progress compared to before, but in terms of future response, these speeds may still be insufficient. This is why we need to strengthen the promotion of a series of innovations in drugs and vaccines based on the pre-screening system. Of course, this will also include how new productivity can be reflected in epidemic prevention and control and pandemic preparedness.

Li Ce: Compared with other fields, medical care has the characteristics of high risk, high investment, and long cycle, so the transformation of scientific and technological achievements is more complicated. Data show that the average conversion rate of my country's major scientific and technological achievements every year is only 20%, while the conversion rate of medical scientific and technological achievements is less than 8%, and the actual industrialization rate is less than 5%. Judging from your practical experience, what obstacles do you think need to be overcome in the process of integrating current medical achievements with industry, academia, and research?

Zhang Wenhong: The main reason is the construction and investment of the entire system, which is a step-by-step process. For example, today we attach great importance to industry, academia and research, which means that the results of research can be quickly and finally transformed. Once transformed, they can be put into hospitals and applied. But there will be huge obstacles in every aspect. To put it simply, our overall investment in research, such as R&D, China’s overall investment in R&D is still far behind that of large international R&D units. That is to produce some new types of things, and our technology is not enough. Even if we have innovative things developed now, the failure rate of conversion is very high, which means that we have to invest a lot from research and development to conversion to make up for our very high failure rate. For example, among our 100 new drugs, only one may eventually be put on the market and fully used clinically; among 10 new drugs that enter clinical research, only one may be successful. So this means that among our 10 candidate new drugs, after sufficient research and a large number of research animal tests, only 10% may actually enter clinical trials. Only 10% may enter clinical trials and ultimately succeed. That adds up to only 1%. This requires a very large base investment in clinical research and development.

The second is that in the process of transformation, one must have enough ability to withstand the failure rate.

Third, a large number of talents and a large number of experienced teams are needed. In this regard, due to my country's reform and opening up, talent accumulation has made great progress, but overall, compared with developed countries and industrially developed countries, we actually still need to further improve.

Therefore, during this year's Two Sessions, the government work report and the General Secretary's speech actually mentioned new productivity, as well as the country's full preparation and investment for such new productivity, in order to speed up the production of our new technologies and accelerate the New technologies are transformed after they are produced and can enter the market after transformation. Therefore, whether it can successfully enter the market in the end is also an important guarantee for whether R&D can be successful.

Li Ce: Is the low conversion rate also related to the evaluation mechanism? In the past, many researchers' achievements were often pursued by publishing articles and evaluating professional titles. Many research results could not be directly used for translation. As the country attaches great importance to the transformation of achievements, how should universities, scientific research institutes, and medical institutions change their evaluation mechanisms to effectively promote the integration of industry, academia, and research?

Zhang Wenhong: Many knowledgeable people have put forward many good suggestions in these aspects, but during the implementation process, many problems will still arise. For example, many people say that we do not need to have assessment standards for the investment we give to scientists, and we should give them enough time. We are pursuing long-term investment and should be able to endure loneliness, instead of evaluating his papers and funds every year.

But in this case, a problem will arise: without assessment standards, it will be difficult to distinguish which scientists are really doing valuable things, and which scientists are actually doing work that is ultimately fruitless. Work is meaningless. This will make our current large amount of scientific investment lose its clear purpose, that is, everyone is investing purely for the sake of investment.

Our country is still mainly based on the project system, which means that after you apply for the project, we will invest in you, but the decision to invest or not is now based on published papers and previous funds, so a project design will be formed. It's a very strange circle - the final thing you may read is the paper. In this way, scientific researchers will purely pursue papers, which may lead to many papers just for the sake of papers. In the end, although there are many papers, once you actually get the project, the probability of success is very low. And because the total funds invested in projects are limited, the funds invested are limited, and the people investing may not necessarily be right. Purely through the writing of papers, it is actually unknown whether the final research team can solve our actual problems.

Therefore, in terms of investment in the future, the suggestions put forward are good, but in terms of implementation, they still need to be classified and implemented: which ones are pure science, and we require a very good selection mechanism for talents who do pure science. But once you decide to let him do such basic work, don't give him a very harsh assessment and have to publish a paper every year, but give him enough time. But for those who are preparing for industrialization, we should conduct very strict assessments, which should be carried out regularly and in stages, and we may have to produce staged results. For those projects that may have high risks, our investment team, whether it is the country or some funds, must have enough patience. If everyone uniformly adopts the so-called gambling mechanism, which is currently very popular in the investment community, we may do something that may not be truly valuable purely for the purpose of pursuing gambling goals. Therefore, in terms of the transformation and clinical application of a project, we still need to make a lot of changes in the investment in the project.

So all in all, in the future, there is a series of work that we need to continue to explore in terms of scientific research and transformation. The current concept of new productive forces proposed by the General Secretary will actually have a huge impact on future scientific and technological development. I believe that China's scientific research system construction will also get better and better.

Li Ce: Industrial funds are an important part of the transformation of achievements. Industrial funds that are suitable for achievement transformation should not only pursue investment returns, but also have the thinking of achievement transformation, that is, the results generated from clinical and laboratory results will eventually be transformed into products and services and returned to the clinic through the help of capital, achieving a closed loop. Take the achievement transformation projects in the field of innovative drugs as an example. The investment period of many funds does not match the long period required for innovative drug projects. Sometimes industrial funds will also set up some mechanisms that are not conducive to the development of early-stage achievement transformation companies, making it difficult to invest in the field. The familiar medical team fell into passivity. What kind of mechanism do you recommend to establish to effectively prevent similar situations from happening?

Zhang Wenhong: This suggestion is actually very good. In fact, there is a common practice in the world, which is to prepare technology and research reserves. In other words, for research on the mechanisms related to this large category of clinically needed drugs, we must first invest in some countries. The investment from these countries will be given in the form of various funds or national funds to specific research laboratories, such as state key laboratories, national laboratories, key universities, or many scientific research institutes. Therefore, everyone will have input. When you invest in something in the early stages, you don’t know whether it will definitely become a transformational result. But with these technical reserves, we will find that in the process of evolving together with the market, we interact with the needs of the market, the needs of the industry, and the research results here. In the process of interaction, it will produce corresponding results. Therefore, I believe that in scientific research and development and the construction of many platforms, our early investment should be based on the strategy and spirit of Wuwenxidong to solidify the industrial foundation of our entire country. Then at this time, new productive forces will emerge in response to social needs and new scientific discoveries.

Li Ce: With the advancement of scientific epidemic prevention, more and more scientific research results have entered into the lives of ordinary people, such as the development of mRNA vaccines, big data and machine vision for tracking the source of infection, etc., all of which are successful scientific research results. Transformation case. In terms of epidemic prevention and control, do you currently have any typical cases of transformation of scientific research results? How does it move from scientific research results to the market? Can you introduce to us the general path for the transformation of medical scientific and technological achievements based on cases?

Zhang Wenhong: Our own team has been focusing on the elimination of tuberculosis epidemics for a long time. First, we have been doing this work for decades. We have studied the immune diagnosis of tuberculosis based on our research on the immune aspect of tuberculosis. We then conduct corresponding immune diagnosis of tuberculosis. The products are also widely used in the market after successful transformation. Second, through this kind of research, we find the patient group with latent tuberculosis infection, and then we use long-term preventive treatment of latent tuberculosis infection and find very good clinical treatment options through clinical research. If this program is used in the future to reduce the incidence of latently infected patients, it can reduce the overall incidence of tuberculosis in China, laying the foundation for the WHO's goal of "by 2035, we will eliminate the prevalence of tuberculosis and reduce the incidence by more than 95%."

Well, after the COVID-19 epidemic is over recently, there are many good vaccine carriers, and our team is currently doing research on them, which can be used for preventive treatment of high-risk groups related to tuberculosis. Such a work requires very close cooperation with our entire research team, from animal experiments to pharmacology, to overall research applications, and to clinical trials. This phased approach is actually the result of long-term investment. So I think it is impossible to say that if we invest money today, we will get results tomorrow. All results must be accumulated over a long period of time. If you have long-term accumulation in this area, it will naturally occur when the time is right.

Therefore, the new productivity proposed today is, in a sense, a reflection of China’s increased investment in science and technology over the past few decades, and now is a very important time point to accelerate output. In this way, we can see that our investment has no direction, but it has a direction. This is the new productive force of our country in the future. This is a very clear direction. But which project will become the new productive force is actually difficult to say today. Whether these innovative products can be used clinically will eventually emerge one by one in the overall scientific research and development environment. And it’s hard to say which one will definitely become a very good star product tomorrow. It’s hard to say. But in order to achieve new productivity and solve the problem of a healthy China, we must make long-term investment in this aspect. This is important.

Therefore, new productivity is by no means a short-term concept, but in a sense, it also points the direction for the overall development of China's future science and technology. Our investment in science and technology and our new productivity are to increase basic investment and accelerate transformation and industrialization. Once this idea is formed, I believe that all ministries and commissions in our country and the country’s subsequent scientific investment and transformation investment will change accordingly. We should see a thriving situation.

Medical insurance and medical resources must be coordinated and balanced

Li Ce: Starting from January 2023, China's new medical insurance reform policy will be gradually implemented in 26 provinces and cities in the mainland. The proportion of social pooling funds and personal accounts will be adjusted. Many people feel that they have less money to use, and everyone still finds it difficult to see a doctor. , medical treatment is expensive. Is the medical reform focused on "techniques" or "principles"? If the direction is right, why can't we reach the ideal other shore?

Zhang Wenhong: Actually, medical reform is a very complex system. If it were a very simple system, we would find that medical reform should be the same in the world, rather than that each country has its own situation.

Well, our medical reform in China has actually gone through many stages. From the earliest publicly funded medical care to our current medical care system that mainly guarantees basic medical care. Then there will be various problems here. If it is purely public funding, then a problem will arise: when you see a doctor, your right to make independent choices is actually very low. Therefore, everyone knows that we are in the stage of public medical care, and many people can only go to the clinic of their own unit or the hospital of their own company to see a doctor. The problem of referral to a high-level hospital is very big, because your employer will ultimately pay for your publicly funded medical treatment, not that you are footing the bill yourself. Because once you pay per unit, it will definitely control costs.

So, what’s the problem now? With our current medical insurance, in addition to paying for it through medical insurance, some expenses actually include high-end equipment and high-end drugs that may still have to be paid out of pocket. However, its overall medical autonomy is stronger. For example, you can go to the county to see a doctor, or you can go to the city or province to see a doctor. Their medical systems will gradually be opened up.

Therefore, China has more autonomy in medical treatment, but once autonomy is achieved, it will bring corresponding problems - it is difficult to truly establish a hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system. If the hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system is not well established, once we encounter some diseases with relatively high incidence rates, we will have a run on resources. Even if it is a disease that is not a pandemic, or even if it is cancer, we will see that in large hospitals, cancer patients are affected by many things when they see a doctor. One impact is that there are too many patients. When there are too many patients, there will be a run on resources, and patients will have a poor medical experience. Then, you find it difficult to see a doctor. However, if you go to some lower hospitals, which are not such top hospitals, you will feel that they are actually short of patients. Therefore, this involves a distribution problem of the entire medical insurance resources and a distribution problem of medical resources: they are not very coordinated.

So, these actually need to be reformed in the future. However, once reform occurs, various issues will be involved, because there will always be people who like it and people who don’t. Every change changes your entire game. Once the rules of the game are changed, some people will feel that they have benefited, and some people will feel that I am not as good as before. This will have a big impact on the entire society...it is everyone's opinion. Therefore, seeing a doctor is difficult and expensive. As long as the reform is going on, it will be difficult for everyone to agree.

Therefore, we must have in-depth and detailed discussions in this regard, that is, in terms of the entire system of reform, we still need the country as a whole to have in-depth and detailed discussions, and reform cannot be a day when we can get a final satisfactory answer. Everyone takes it for granted that publicly funded medical care is good. If everything is publicly funded, it means that many of our medical purchases and the implementation of new technologies will have big problems. Because all new technologies obviously have high investment costs, then their prices will be high. If all coverage is provided at public expense, what problems will it cause? Publicly funded medical resources may be wasted because they all belong to the state anyway. Then when seeing a doctor, everyone only looks for face or seeks an acquaintance, so public medical resources may be wasted casually.

So one of the things you mentioned today is whether it should be fully funded by the public, whether the state can support it, and how to carry out medical reform, which can not only ensure innovation, but also ensure the ease of medical treatment for everyone. It is easier to see a doctor, and new technologies and drugs can be easily obtained. In fact, this is a very difficult balance.

So what should we do here? To be honest, in the end we still have to open up the entire health care reform system. It's like a very difficult situation. We still have to cut it into pieces, that is, give it every piece. After we have a thorough understanding, we will decide how we should do it.

Reform is goal-oriented. Only when we achieve the goal-oriented goal will we do the corresponding things. So, if we can implement medical innovation faster today, then it is obvious that our hospital must lower the threshold for the entry of new technologies. You can’t deny access to all innovative hospitals, but if the hospital does, will our medical insurance be able to afford it? How to control its new symptoms? How can people want to use new technologies, new solutions, and new treatments, but the entire cost of medical insurance can be effectively covered? Medical insurance can pay for it, but how can we ensure that this medical resource is not abused?

Because this is a combination of market nature and medical insurance payment, once you market it, it means you will make a profit. If there is a profit, there may be a waste of public-funded medical bills and public-funded medical care. So this kind of waste is actually a waste of social resources. So these are extremely complex, but we cannot say that we will not do it because it is complicated. Instead, we should break down the entire complex problem into some specific, clear, and small problems and solve them one by one.

I believe that as long as you have this determination, there should be a very good result in the end.

Li Ce: Social progress lies in reform, but the pain of reform is inevitable. In September 2017, the drug bonus was cancelled. The National Health Commission said at that time that the era of supplementing medical treatment with drugs has passed. But medical treatment is expensive for ordinary people. Is it related to the hospital’s need to generate revenue? For example, we want to promote telemedicine and build a national key laboratory, but the financial allocation may only reach 10% or even less than the cost. What do you think?

Zhang Wenhong: In fact, China’s medical care is still dominated by the country’s public hospitals, which is the entire Chinese medical system. It will be more complicated in the future, with both public and private hospitals and, in the future, foreign-funded hospitals. China is now gradually opening up its hospital system to foreign investment, so in the future the whole orderly rule will have an increasing degree of marketization.

Because future marketization requires all entities to be relatively fair in the entire competition process. Then only if the entire system is established as a relatively fair system and medical insurance plays a full role in it, we will solve some corresponding problems at this time. This question includes your current request for remote medical treatment. How do you set up the entire market mechanism? Is our project a public welfare project, or is it a project driven by market mechanisms?

So now, as long as your medical care is not fully funded by the public, then it will definitely involve the operation of the market mechanism. So now everyone thinks that we can implement remote diagnosis and treatment through the investment of an entire country. So while doing remote diagnosis and treatment here, it is actually necessary to clearly understand who is paying the bill and what problems are to be solved. Are we a market demand or a public welfare project?

The overall high-speed rail route in the United States is much smaller than that in China, but its kilometers are far less than that in China. One of the main reasons is that its marketization does not have enough funds to support such a large high-speed rail coverage. That is to say, it feels that it may not make money by building high-speed rail.

But we in China have built a lot of high-speed rail now, for many reasons. In fact, many of them are also people's livelihood projects. In other words, we enable people in many remote areas of China to enjoy the convenience of traveling to big cities or to various places in China. At the same time, there is actually this demand for remote areas, as well as for the urbanization and construction of a new socialist countryside in rural China.

So what kind of strategy everyone adopts actually has a lot of room for reform and change. The key is what kind of goal you do it with.

But I think the best way overall is that after our medical reform, investment in medical care can gradually increase, and then it should become more and more convenient for people to see a doctor, but at the same time they can afford some new technologies and new solutions. So this Under such circumstances, ordinary people should not only enjoy access to new drugs, new equipment, and new technologies, but they should not waste medical resources and make it more convenient for them to obtain them.

These aspects actually include how to establish a hierarchical diagnosis and treatment under the existing market system. Therefore, this hierarchical diagnosis and treatment does not mean that hierarchical diagnosis and treatment can only be established under fully public-funded treatment. In fact, under the market mechanism, if we go into detail By analyzing an existing problem, we can also establish an effective market-level diagnosis and treatment situation.

To grasp the epidemic situation of the disease, we must do a good job in interconnection at the national level.

Li Ce: In 1952, WHO established a global influenza detection network, and various countries established influenza reference laboratories. Under the unified coordination and management of WHO, they collected their own influenza strains. The current international situation is relatively complex. In your observation Inside, how is the international cooperation going? Has there been a consensus? How should global public health cooperation be carried out in the future to deal with possible future epidemics?

Zhang Wenhong: China has always had a very positive attitude towards international opening up and global integration. The current international situation, as a whole, is of course very complicated. But in terms of influenza laboratories, global product laboratories, and global data sharing, China has actually been doing very well. Our China CDC regularly shares national data with the entire international influenza surveillance network.

So one of the many issues you mentioned is also an emerging infectious disease. In fact, it involves more than just influenza. Now it's equivalent to some data other than influenza. In fact, maybe what you mentioned is that sharing it with everyone is not enough. There are many reasons why that is not enough. One is the construction of our laboratories in China. Whether we can quickly achieve some internationalization, this requires a lot of investment. Second, for some of our internationalization paths, we must definitely work in international organizations, including the WHO, and some related international organizations, an organization in which China can play an active role. Only then will we finally have full exchanges and communication through equality and mutual benefit.

So in this regard, we are also actively communicating and sharing with the international community. Including this June, I will go to Geneva to participate in the formulation of WHO's tuberculosis treatment guidelines, and as a Chinese expert there will discuss with the global conference. A very important point here is how to share each other’s data and the results of each other’s clinical research. Some time ago, our team also went to South Africa to conduct global exchanges on the current global situation of pneumococcal infection.

As for the future, we are also exploring how to connect some of each other's data at the national and WHO levels. For infectious disease surveillance, we have established a very good surveillance network. How can this network communicate and interconnect with other countries under a unified standard at our national level? Well, a lot of these tasks actually need to be carried out at the entire international exchange level.

We also exchange some data through international authoritative organizations, including the WHO, in which China also plays an important role. Because data exchange must be the behavior of a country, not that we exchange some personal data or the data of a certain unit today. Because this does not represent a standard for our internationalization, it is just a sharing of some of your personal data.

Therefore, during this meeting in South Africa, we also fully discussed how to share data in the future. I think China should be active and pragmatic in this regard in the future. I think future work in this area will contribute to the global early warning of infectious diseases and will have a positive impact on the prevention and control of our globalized biochemical products in the future.

Li Ce: The epidemic situation of infectious diseases announced by the National Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention has increased year-on-year. On the one hand, there are seasonal factors. On the other hand, is there a factor of weakening the immune system?

Zhang Wenhong: There are many reasons here. One is because we opened up this time. We saw many epidemics last winter, and the seasonal peak of the epidemic showed some confusion after our monitoring. In other words, it no longer appears regularly, and some of the diseases that do not usually break out are infectious diseases or infectious diseases. At this time, its peak value also increased.

However, overall, it is also related to the fact that China has closely stepped up the layout of the entire monitoring network, and major hospitals have strengthened the detection of clinical fever patients. We used to have an old saying, "Without testing, there are no infectious diseases." Now we have fully implemented testing, and some viruses that were rarely detected before, such as respiratory syncytial virus, human metapneumovirus, and mycoplasma, have also been tested. , chlamydia, etc. In the past, many hospitals did not test, and many hospitals did not even test for influenza.

So now that everyone has fully carried out testing and scattered reports, you will suddenly find out how the number of patients has increased a lot during this period. We also found through monitoring data that the number of monitored cases is increasing. At the same time, people have experienced that there are a lot of fevers this winter, so they think it is a certain infectious disease, such as the new coronavirus or influenza, that has peaked again. ? In fact, the period from last winter to this spring was quite complicated, with several infectious diseases emerging at the same time.

There are many reasons for this, but at least one thing is that China is now more and more prepared for the detection of these infectious diseases. At least we know what's going on. In the past, we may have had many people infected with fever, and everyone was panicked, but at least we know that influenza is the main cause during this period, so our influenza drugs must be in place. During this period, mycoplasma and chlamydia are the main ones, and our mycoplasma drugs must be in place. During this time, the new coronavirus is coming again. We must protect the elderly and prepare the medicines for the new coronavirus for the elderly.

In this way, it is very clear that we have a good grasp of the epidemic situation of the disease. Even if there is another epidemic, or this kind of seasonal epidemic occurs again, even if the number of cases is large, we will know what happened, and then we will guide, triage, and carry out hierarchical diagnosis and treatment. In fact, these problems can eventually be solved well.

Li Ce: China has experienced SARS and COVID-19. The government, research institutes, medical institutions, etc. have made a lot of efforts and even sacrifices. What should we learn from each epidemic prevention, and what kind of emergency facilities and emergency mechanisms should be left in place so that we can plan for the future?

Zhang Wenhong: You asked this very well. In fact, everyone is summing up experience and what we should do. The country is also summing up experience, and the whole world is summing up experience. So from a broad perspective, everyone around the world has proposed that we need to prepare for a pandemic, and the WHO has repeatedly emphasized the risk of disease X. From our national level, it depends on three points:

First, we have increased the capacity building for monitoring, detection and early warning, in which we, as the National Center for Communication Medicine, play an important role.

Second, the country attaches great importance to the incubation of new productive forces. The incubation of new productivity requires many key laboratories, including our Shanghai Key Laboratory for Emergency Response to Infectious Diseases and national laboratories, which actually serve as the scientific connotation of new productivity.

Third, the country has recently made many policy changes to implement these new productive forces. I believe that here is how to convert, and rapid conversion is also a good preparation for the future popularity of those of us. So the future is a pandemic that we are sure will come, but we don’t know when it will come. One thing we are sure of is that we should do better than the last time. We should do better every time, so that we can Go further. I believe that the series of things our country has taken recently are all preparations for this.

The last thing is individuals, no matter what preparations we have made as a country, in the end we still need to have good immunity. If we have good immunity and good living habits, then I think we will have enough ability to deal with any infectious disease epidemic. Here I hope that everyone can sleep well, eat well, and exercise well. In this way, I believe that everyone should maintain a very good health. I also borrow your program here, just in front of the video, or watching the health promotions you push, these friends, everyone is in good health. I believe we will be fine in the future, although there will be many challenges.