The Chinese Government’s Response to the Pandemic: Measures, Dynamic Changes, and Main Patterns

Abstract

(1) Background: The governance measures that governments deploy vary substantially across countries and even within countries; there is, however, limited knowledge of the responses of local governments or from different areas in the same country. (2) Methods: By using grounded theory and an automatic text processing method, this study analyses the pandemic governance measures, the pandemic governance pattern, and possible factors across 28 provinces in mainland China based on the text of 28 official provincial government Sina microblogs dating from 20 January to 1 July 2020. (3) Results and discussion: The provincial pandemic governance patterns in China are divided into a pathogen-control pattern, a diagnosis and treatment consolidation pattern, a balanced promotion pattern, a quick-adjustment response pattern, and a recovery-oriented pattern. The pandemic severity, economic development, public health service, and population structure may all have an impact on pandemic governance measures. (4) Conclusions: The conclusions of this study may help us to reconstruct governance systems related to global public health emergencies from the perspective of normalisation, as well as providing important clarification for management and a reference for countries seeking to curb the global spread of a pandemic.

The role of social media in public health crises caused by infectious disease: a scoping review

“…In particular, Twitter, Facebook, SinaWeibo, YouTube, Instagram, WeChat and Reddit were the most widely used platforms in the studies examined as part of this review. While the research on government and health authority’s use of social media was far more limited than that of individual users, these organisations were most likely to use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram 59 60. There are few studies on other social media platforms (including WhatsApp, social network sites (SNSs), etc) 55 47.…”

“…While the research on government and health authority’s use of social media was far more limited than that of individual users, these organisations were most likely to use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 59 60 There are few studies on other social media platforms (including WhatsApp, social network sites (SNSs), etc). 55 47 It should be noted that many studies did not focus on a single social media platform.…”

Health Services Utilization in China during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Results from a Large-Scale Online Survey

“…Finally, we were unable to capture the long-term trend or resumption of the health services utilization after the first wave of the pandemic in the current study. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the adjustment of primary countermeasures from non-pharmaceutical to pharmaceutical interventions, the improvement of accuracy and efficiency of testing, the advent of effective vaccines and treatments, together with the enhanced awareness and knowledge of the virus among the general public, may lead to a reduced impact on essential health services utilization [ 42 ]. Therefore, dynamic evaluation is needed to understand how health services utilization among the affected population evolves as the pandemic continues, especially after the emergence of the Omicron variant.…”

Artificial Intelligence for Forecasting the Prevalence of COVID-19 Pandemic: An Overview

“…COVID-19 is a global pandemic that has been rapidly spreading worldwide [ 1 ]. It has affected more than 100 million people and caused about two deaths per million as of the end of January 2021.…”