Study on the Dilemma and Countermeasures of Rural Emergency Management Under COVID-19—A Case Analysis Based on the Rural Areas Around Chengdu

The COVID-19 broke out and spread rapidly, posing a great challenge to the emergency management capacity of various regions in China, especially in rural areas. This paper takes three communities in ShiYang town, Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province as cases, to analyze the specific practice of rural response to public health emergencies, summarize different stages in epidemic prevention and control, and explore the difficulties and solutions in rural emergency management. Through the case analysis, it is found that the rural epidemic prevention and control in ShiYang Town have experienced four stages including exploration period, development period, improvement period, and maturity period. At the same time, there are some dilemmas in rural emergency management, such as the imperfect emergency management mechanism, insufficient resources guarantee, and villagers’ weak awareness of health and epidemic prevention. Therefore, the paper proposes such countermeasures suggestions as improving the emergency management mechanism of rural public health, optimizing the resources guarantee system for rural emergency management, strengthening the popularization of health education, providing theoretical and practical guidance for improving the level of rural emergency management, and then promoting the modernization of rural emergency management system and capacity. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Analysis on Cooperation Relationship of Poverty Alleviation Organizations in Sichuan Province Based on Link Prediction

Poverty eradication is the common ideal of mankind. Currently, as COVID-19 continues to rage around the world, the cause of poverty reduction faces greater challenges. Poverty reduction requires the involvement of multiple parties, and the challenging nature of it determines the complexity of participation in poverty reduction cooperation. In this paper, the link prediction method is used to calculate the path similarity in the network and use the Katz index to predict the connection possibility between unknown links in the poverty alleviation network. Take Sichuan Province as a case to analyze and put forward cooperation suggestions. The results show that in the entire network, all anti-poverty organizations recommend cooperation with one of the government departments, local schools, state-owned enterprises and high quality schools. Among them, government departments and local schools are the most recommended organizations. After the overall victory in the fight against poverty, the governance of relative poverty still requires continuous attention. Through our research, we hope to contribute to a better construction of a new poverty reduction system under the new poverty model. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Should we remain hopeful? The key 8 weeks: spatiotemporal epidemic characteristics of COVID-19 in Sichuan Province and its comparative analysis with other provinces in China and global epidemic trends.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 spread worldwide quickly. Exploring the epidemiological characteristics could provide a basis for responding to imported cases abroad and to formulate prevention and control strategies in areas where COVID-19 is still spreading rapidly. METHODS: The number of confirmed cases, daily growth, incidence and length of time from the first reported case to the end of the local cases (i.e., non-overseas imported cases) were compared by spatial (geographical) and temporal classification and visualization of the development and changes of the epidemic situation by layers through maps. RESULTS: In the first wave, a total of 539 cases were reported in Sichuan, with an incidence rate of 0.6462/100,000. The closer to Hubei the population centres were, the more pronounced the epidemic was. The peak in Sichuan Province occurred in the second week. Eight weeks after the Wuhan lockdown, the health crisis had eased. The longest epidemic length at the city level in China (except Wuhan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) was 53 days, with a median of 23 days. Spatial autocorrelation analysis of China showed positive spatial correlation (Moran's Index > 0, p < 0.05). Most countries outside China began to experience a rapid rise in infection rates 4 weeks after their first case. Some European countries experienced that rise earlier than the USA. The pandemic in Germany, Spain, Italy, and China took 28, 29, 34, and 18 days, respectively, to reach the peak of daily infections, after their daily increase of up to 20 cases. During this time, countries in the African region and Southeast Asian region were at an early stage of infections, those in the Eastern Mediterranean region and region of the Americas were in a rapid growth phase. CONCLUSIONS: After the closure of the outbreak city, appropriate isolation and control measures in the next 8 weeks were key to control the outbreak, which reduced the peak value and length of the outbreak. Some countries with improved epidemic situations need to develop a continuous "local strategy at entry checkpoints" to to fend off imported COVID-19.

Effects of Comorbidities on the Elderly Patients with COVID-19: Clinical Characteristics of Elderly Patients Infected with COVID-19 from Sichuan, China.

OBJECTIVES: The co-occurrence of chronic diseases in the elderly is a common problem. However, the relationship between comorbidities and the prognosis of elderly patients with COVID-19 was not clear. This study was supposed to describe the clinical characteristics of elderly patients with COVID-19 infection from Sichuan province and the effects of comorbidity. DESIGN: A retrospective study. SETTINGS AND PARTICIPANTS: COVID-19 patients from Public Health Clinical Center of Chengdu between December 16, 2019 and February 26, 2020 were included in this study. Patients were divided into elderly group (≥60 years old) and non-elderly group (< 60 years old). RESULTS: Elderly patients with COVID-19 indicated relatively higher proportion of comorbidities, and the most common were atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (56.5%), hypertension (43.5%) and chronic pulmonary disease (21.7%). The proportion of severe cases was higher in elderly group than that in non-elderly group (73.9% and 42.2%, respectively, P=0.012). During hospitalization, elderly patients indicated relatively higher proportion of complications, such as shock (21.7%), respiratory failure (21.7%). The proportion of patients with a decreased number of CD8+ lymphocytes (82.6%) and B lymphocytes (77.8%) in elderly patients was significantly higher than that in non-elderly group (48.9% and 44.8%, respectively). All 3 deaths were elderly patients with comorbidities and the cell counts of T lymphocyte subsets, B and NK cells of them were significantly decreased at admission. CONCLUSIONS: Elderly patients with COVID-19 had a high proportion of severe cases and comorbidities, more likely to show low immune function, and indicate higher proportion of complications.