A Preventive and Control Strategy for COVID-19 Infection: An Experience From a Third-Tier Chinese City.

COVID-19 is a rapidly spreading infectious disease that has led to a global pandemic. This study describes a novel strategy for preventing and controlling COVID-19 infection in the third-tier city of Liaocheng, China. The prevention and control measurements included city-wide orders to close workspaces, sanitize essential workspaces, quarantine individuals with a travel history to an epidemic area, and issue emergency medical responses to quarantine and treat COVID-19 patients using all necessary technologies, personnel, and resources. As a result, there were only 38 diagnosed COVID-19 cases in Liaocheng since the pandemic began in China in late 2019, including in the metropolitan area and six suburban counties, accounting for more than 6.39 millions residents living in a 8,715 km2 area. There was no COVID-19-related fatality and no healthcare professional inter-transmission as of June 25, 2020. The strategies of this third-tier Chinese city provide useful insights into approaches to prevent and control COVID-19 spread in other Chinese cities and countries.

An analysis of coronavirus disease 2019 with spline regression at province level during first-level response to major public health emergency out of Hubei, China.

This study aims to locate the knots of cumulative coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case number during the first-level response to public health emergency in the provinces of China except Hubei. The provinces were grouped into three regions, namely eastern, central and western provinces, and the trends between adjacent knots were compared among the three regions. COVID-19 case number, migration scale index, Baidu index, demographic, economic and public health resource data were collected from 22 Chinese provinces from 19 January 2020 to 12 March 2020. Spline regression was applied to the data of all included, eastern, central and western provinces. The research period was divided into three stages by two knots. The first stage (from 19 January to around 25 January) was similar among three regions. However, in the second stage, growth of COVID-19 case number was flatter and lasted longer in western provinces (from 25 January to 18 February) than in eastern and central provinces (from 26 February to around 11 February). In the third stage, the growth of COVID-19 case number slowed down in all the three regions. Included covariates were different among the three regions. Overall, spline regression with covariates showed the different change patterns in eastern, central and western provinces, which provided a better insight into regional characteristics of COVID-19 pandemic.