The Influence of Significant Public Health Events on Offline Consumption and Its Pathways

In the face of a significant public health event,consumers may either increase their panic buying or decrease their willingness to make purchases.This study focuses on the impact of a significant public health event on offline store sales and consumer consumption,utilizing data from chain convenience stores in Hefei and Wuhu during early 2019 and early 2020 in China.Employing a difference-in-differences model,the study investigates the effect of the significant public health event outbreak on weekly store sales,order numbers,and consumer consumption in terms of product quantities,transaction amount,average amount per order,and transaction frequency.Different from prior literature that finds hoarding behavior of consumers online,the findings of this paper indicate a significant reduction in stores’offline weekly sales and order numbers,as well as consumers’offline weekly consumption across the four dimensions,as a result of the significant public health event outbreak.Additionally,employing a mediation model,the study explores the pathway of population mobility through which the significant public health event adversely affects offline consumption.Furthermore,subset analysis is conducted for stores located in different areas and consumers with varying characteristics,revealing that the aforementioned conclusions predominantly apply to stores situated in office areas and residential areas,as well as consumers with either no apparent preference for different product categories or a noticeable preference for food.

Dynamic analysis of major public health emergency transmission considering the dual-layer coupling of community–resident complex networks

We construct a dual-layer coupled complex network of communities and residents to represent the interconnected risk transmission network between communities and the disease transmission network among residents. It characterizes the process of infectious disease transmission among residents between communities through the SE2IHR model considering two types of infectors. By depicting a more fine-grained social structure and combining further simulation experiments, the study validates the crucial role of various prevention and control measures implemented by communities as primary executors in controlling the epidemic. Research shows that the geographical boundaries of communities and the social interaction patterns of residents have a significant impact on the spread of the epidemic, where early detection, isolation and treatment strategies at community level are essential for controlling the spread of the epidemic. In addition, the study explores the collaborative governance model and institutional advantages of communities and residents in epidemic prevention and control.

A study on predicting crisis information dissemination in epidemic-level public health events

Crisis information dissemination plays a key role in the development of emergency responses to epidemic-level public health events.Therefore,clarifying the causes of crisis information dissemination and making accurate predictions to effectively control such situations have attracted extensive attention.Based on media richness theory and persuasion theory,this study constructs an index system of crisis information dissemination impact factors from two aspects:the crisis information publisher and the published crisis information content.A multi-layer perceptron is used to analyze the weight of the index system,and the prediction is transformed into a pattern classification problem to test crisis information dissemination.In this study,COVID-19 is considered a representative event.An experiment is conducted to predict the crisis information dissemination of COVID-19 in two megacities.Data related to COVID-19 from these two megacities are acquired from the well-known Chinese social media platform Weibo.The experimental results show that not only the identity but also the social influence of the information publisher has a significant impact on crisis information dissemination in epidemic-level public health events.Furthermore,the proposed model achieves more than 95%test accuracy,precision rate,recall value and f1-score in the prediction task.The study provides decision-making support for government departments and a guide for correctly disseminating crisis information and public opinion during future epidemic-level public health events.

REDISSE in Benin and Lessons Learned for the Management of Public Health Emergencies after Five Years of Implementation

Introduction: Benin was embarked on phase 3 of the REDISSE Benin project (Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement) which began in 2018. The objectives were in five key components namely, Surveillance and health information;Laboratory capacity building;Emergency preparedness and response;Human resources management for effective disease surveillance and epidemic preparedness;and Institutional Capacity Building, Project Management, Coordination and Advocacy. After five years of implementation, this study aimed at the documentation of lessons learned and best practices. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study. Apart from individual semi-structured interviews, a thematic workshops bringing together the project’s main stakeholders recruited on an exhaustive way by component to identify and validate lessons learned, good practices and propose improvement mechanisms to be taken into account by the sector. Criteria were set up and used to validate best practices and lessons learned. Results: A total 54 (Surveillance workshop), 47 (Preparedness & response workshop), 53 (Human Resources workshop), 26 (Laboratories workshop) participated to the thematic workshops, and five interviews. The good practices (33: 9 for animal health, 7 for human health and 17 crosscutting) and lessons learned (10: 3 for animal health and 7 for human health) have been identified and have been the subject, depending on the case, of proposals for improvement or conditions necessary for their maintenance. Discussion: The richness of a project lies not only in the immediate achievement of its results, but also and above all, in its usefulness for similar interventions, whether in the local, regional, national or international context. It is in this context that the REDISSE project has set out to make public the various lessons learned and best practices from the implementation of its activities over a period of some five consecutive years.

Analysis of CDC’s Role in Public Health Emergencies

Objective:To explore the role of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC)in public health emergencies.Methods:The details of 12 public health events that occurred between January 2021 to December 2022 were analyzed to explore the roles of the CDC.Results:There were 160 patients involved in 10 public health events in 2021 and 48 patients involved in 2 public health events in 2022.Besides,the proportion of school public health events in 2022 was 0%,which was lower than in 2021,which was 80%(P<0.05).99.38%of patients during public health events were sent to the hospital promptly in 2022,which was higher than that in 2021,which was 81.25%(P<0.05).Furthermore,the average time taken for the CDC to control public health events in 2022 was 20.11±1.62 hours,and the average time taken to send inspection reports was shorter than that in 2021.The public satisfaction score was also higher in 2022 compared to 2021(P<0.05).Conclusion:The role of the CDC is to control infectious diseases.Therefore,it is important to pinpoint the existing problems in the strategies implemented by the CDC so that more improvements can be made to better prevent infectious diseases.

Study of the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Health Insurance Fund of Hubei Province in 2020

Objective To provide a reference for future budget of health insurance fund for the COVID-19 pandemic in other parts of China or other major public health events.Meanwhile,it also offers a reference for the government to introduce and adjust the policy of health insurance funds after the pandemic.Methods Models of the income,expenditure and cumulative balance of health insurance fund in Hubei Province in 2020 were established and compared.The former was mainly established and tested using SPSS 26.0 and Excel,while the latter was obtained by inferential analysis.Results and Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic reduced the income and increased expenditure of the health insurance fund in Hubei Province in 2020,resulting in a deficit.The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a deficit in health insurance fund of Hubei Province in the short term,but in the long term,the outbreak will not have a major impact on the health insurance fund.

Enlightenment of COVID-19 Treated by Botanical Drugs on the Development of Drugs for Rare Diseases in China

Objective To study the feasibility of developing botanical drugs to treat intractable diseases and play an important role in dealing with major public health crises.Methods From January 1990 to May 2021,a bibliographic search was carried out on the use of botanical drugs,rare disease drugs,related registration management policies and regulations in PubMed and CNKI.The following keywords were searched in the database:Rare disease policies and regulations,orphan drugs,botanical drugs for intractable diseases,botanical drugs for the treatment of new coronary pneumonia,traditional Chinese medicine,and emergency guidelines for major public health crisis.Other data were obtained from“Chinese Pharmacopoeia”and relevant Chinese government websites for sorting and analysis.Results and Conclusion Based on 39 Chinese corresponding policies and regulations,challenges and opportunities of developing and researching drugs for treating rare diseases were found out after the analysis and comparison.Based on the study of national policies on drugs for rare diseases,the priority review and approval procedures in the drug registration,as well as China’s emergency guidelines and policies for major public health events,some problems in the use of drugs for rare diseases are found out.Therefore,it is recommended to actively adopt the property rights protection system,explore the folk prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicine and the potential of hospital preparations,and the registration review strategy of giving priority to the use of botanical drugs for rare diseases.Thus,the international status of botanical drugs for rare disease and the influence of responding to major public health events can be enhanced.

重大公共卫生事件中疫情报告和发布制度之检视与完善

在应对重大公共卫生事件过程中,疫情报告和发布制度是否完善直接关系到疫情防控和处置的成效。现行疫情报告和发布制度散见于有关法律、行政法规、地方性法规、部门规章、政府规章、规范性文件以及有关应急预案中。经梳理,现行疫情报告制度和发布制度存在一些共性问题,包括制度功能定位不够清晰、缺乏针对新发传染病的具体规定、未充分体现科技赋能等。同时,也存在一些个性问题,比如在疫情报告制度方面、落实疫情报告主体责任的工作机制有待健全、疫情网络直报缺乏法律的刚性约束、缺乏疫情报告的“吹哨人”制度等。在疫情发布制度方面,地方政府在传染病暴发、流行时的疫情发布职责不够明确,疫情发布的信息范围不够明确具体,对疫情信息的辟谣机制缺乏制度性规定等。在检视上述问题的基础上,有针对性地提出相应的对策建议。