COVID-19: Evaluation of Fever Clinic and Fever Sentinel Configuration—A Case Study of Harbin, China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed the inequalities in health services in countries around the world under severe pressure. As crucial pillars in the prevention and control of COVID-19, fever clinics and fever sentinels are important sites for the screening, diagnosis, and isolation of patients. This study comprehensively evaluated the spatial-layout characteristics, configuration quantity, and service capacity of 42 fever clinics and 418 fever sentinels in Harbin from the perspective of supply by using GIS spatial-analysis methods such as kernel density analysis. From the perspective of demand, we evaluated the accessibility of fever clinics with the modified two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method; the OD cost matrix method and Voronoi diagram method were used to evaluate the accessibility and service pressure of fever sentinels. This study found that a monocentric clustering characterizes the spatial layout of fever clinics, and the design of fever clinics in new urban areas and marginal rural areas is relatively lacking. The spatial layout of fever sentinels includes blank areas, and the service pressure in the central city area is relatively high. Combined with the assessment results, the study discussed optimization strategies and implementation paths for improving the public health and epidemic prevention system for COVID-19 in terms of four aspects: the transformation of governance practice, the spatial-planning response, the digital infrastructure response, and guarantees of policies and regulations.

Gis Health Services, a Proposed Management Model in Public Health. A Case Study Applied to the Conditions Imposed by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

“…The development of a platform built on the principles of GIS technology, which can become the foundation of a digital Atlas of health services at the level of a country, circumscribes the objective of this study. This statement can be made even if the idea of a platform that includes resources and tools capable of allowing an increase in the performance of the public health system has not been stated in this way and as a result of the results obtained by other researchers, such as Xu, D. et al [19] or Adibhesami, M.A. et al [20].…”