Which Matters More in Fighting COVID-19-Government Policy or Community Participation?

Objective: As a heavily populated megacity, Shanghai faces major epidemic risks. However, Shanghai's control of COVID-19 has been successful owing to both the strict government policy and wide community participation. Here, we investigated the impact of these stakeholders and examined who played a major role across different epidemic stages. Design: We extended the classic susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) model considering the heterogeneous contact structure in four social sceneries, i.e., school, workplace, public entertainment venues, and neighborhood community, which could reflect the impact of lockdown policy and wide participation of residents happened at the community level. Result: The simulation results showed that without lockdown policy and only with community participation, the daily new confirmed cases would gradually increase to more than 7,000 [292/1,000,000] at the end of Sep. However, without community participation and only with a lockdown policy, the daily new confirmed cases sharply decreased to 30 [1.2/1,000,000] at the end of the 1st month and remained low for several months. However, when a lockdown policy was gradually lifted, the new confirmed cases increased exponentially, eventually reaching more than 17,000 [708/1,000,000]. Therefore, a government lockdown policy was necessary for the rapid control of COVID-19 during the outbreak stage while community participation is more important in keeping the number of new confirmed cases low during the reopening stage. Conclusion: Government lockdown policy and community participation play different roles in the control of COVID-19 at different stages of the epidemic: although the government played a leading role in setting up policies, the broader participation of community fever clinics (CFCs) and the general public were especially crucial in winning the battle against COVID-19 in the long run.

An Overview of Epidemiology of COVID-19 in Macau S.A.R.

The Greater Bay Area of southern China has a population of over 71 million people. The area is well-connected with Hubei province, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. Macau, as the most densely populated city in the world, is very vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks. Since its return to the sovereignty of China 20 years ago, the city has experienced outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Swine flu, and COVID-19. At the time of writing, 10 confirmed imported/local transmission cases were recorded. The government undertook measures to attain and then maintain 40 days without new cases. In this article, we report on the 10 confirmed cases and discuss the measures that the Macau Special Administrative Region (S.A.R.) government undertook during the COVID-19 pandemic.