How Is the Risk of Major Sudden Infectious Epidemic Transmitted? A Grounded Theory Analysis Based on COVID-19 in China

Abstract

The outbreak of a sudden infectious epidemic often causes serious casualties and property losses to the whole society. The COVID-19 epidemic that broke out in China at the end of December 2019, spread rapidly, resulting in large groups of confirmed diagnoses, and causing severe damage to China's society. This epidemic even now encompasses the globe. This paper takes the COVID-19 epidemic that has occurred in China as an example, the original data of this paper is derived from 20 Chinese media reports on COVID-19, and the grounded theory is used to analyze the original data to find the risk transmission rules of a sudden infectious epidemic. The results show that in the risk transmission of a sudden infectious epidemic, there are six basic elements: the risk source, the risk early warning, the risk transmission path, the risk transmission victims, the risk transmission inflection point, and the end of risk transmission. After a sudden infectious epidemic breaks out, there are three risk transmission paths, namely, a medical system risk transmission path, a social system risk transmission path, and a psychological risk transmission path, and these three paths present a coupling structure. These findings in this paper suggest that people should strengthen the emergency management of a sudden infectious epidemic by controlling of the risk source, establishing an efficient and scientific risk early warning mechanism and blocking of the risk transmission paths. The results of this study can provide corresponding policy implications for the emergency management of sudden public health events.

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“…By doing this, China's public health system's capability to respond to infectious diseases has been comprehensively improved. e vertical reporting of pandemic information in the multiple-level system ensures the accuracy and comprehensiveness of information and thus reduces social panic [17]. However, this kind of mechanism would influence the timeliness of publishing pandemic information to a certain extent and is prone to distort and misjudge the early warning information during transmission [18].…”

“…erefore, from an institutional perspective, one of the reasons that puts the whistleblower in a difficult position (i.e., a dilemma) is that the institution of reporting early-earning information to the government is overly complex and time-consuming [1,17]. When a pandemic risk shows a sign of continuous spread, the higher authorities are still cautiously assessing or evaluating the risk information, while the local government is waiting for the higher authorities' decisions [2,15,16].…”

The Whistleblower’s Dilemma: An Evolutionary Game Analysis of the Public Health Early Warning System

“…By doing this, China's public health system's capability to respond to infectious diseases has been comprehensively improved. The vertical reporting of pandemic information in multiple-level system ensures the accuracy and comprehensiveness of information and thus reduces social panic [17]. However, this kind of mechanism would influence the timeliness of publishing pandemic information to a certain extent and is prone to distort and misjudge the early warning information during transmission [18].…”

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