Officials from the Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Finance, and the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission explain the latest government plan to enhance the province's ability to combat and prevent diseases on Oct 20. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]

Zhejiang authorities hosted a press conference explaining the latest government plan to enhance the province's ability to combat and prevent diseases on Oct 20.

In response to the national call in May, the Zhejiang Provincial Development and Reform Commission, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Finance, and the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission jointly released an implementation scheme to improve disease prevention, control, and treatment in the province's public healthcare system between 2020 and 2022, in late-September.

The scheme specifies 16 tasks to enhance the province's capabilities in three areas: preventing and controlling diseases, treating diseases, and mobilizing sufficient resources for the medical system.

According to the scheme, Zhejiang will ensure that facilities run by disease control and prevention bodies at provincial, municipal, and county levels all meet certain standards, and that all counties and cities are equipped with laboratories boasting at least a BSL-2 biosafety level by the end of 2022.

The cities of Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Wenzhou are tasked with building provincial-level epidemic treatment centers. Every prefecture-level city is required to designate one or two of its best comprehensive hospitals as dedicated treatment centers for infectious diseases and at least one other as a backup center (every county or county-level city must meet the same requirement.).

The province's medical institutes must improve pre-examination and triage systems in their outpatient services, enhance testing ability in their labs, strengthen management of infectious diseases, and give higher priority to traditional Chinese medicine when combating epidemics.

There must be at least one emergency ambulance for every 30,000 regular residents in Zhejiang by the end of 2022, and every locality in Zhejiang must maintain enough medical logistics to last 10 days.