Our province is fully committed to the prevention and treatment of infection in Covid-19-earnestly safeguarding people’s life safety and health.

At present, the epidemic situation in COVID-19 has entered a new stage, and the focus of prevention and control policies has shifted to protecting health and preventing severe diseases.

How will Yunnan follow up? How to ensure the treatment of critically ill patients with infection in Covid-19? How to prevent and control epidemic situation in rural areas? The reporter interviewed the working groups of the leading group headquarters of the provincial party Committee and the provincial government to deal with the epidemic situation (hereinafter referred to as the headquarters).

"Yunnan has made comprehensive arrangements and detailed key tasks in epidemic prevention and control, and promoted the transition from anti-infection to’ health protection and severe disease prevention’." Yang Yang, deputy governor and director of the headquarters office, said that the provincial party committee and government have fully implemented the spirit of the important speech and instructions of the Supreme Leader General Secretary on epidemic prevention and control, and resolutely put "protecting health and preventing severe diseases" in a prominent position in epidemic prevention and control. Wang Ning, secretary of the provincial party committee, and Wang Yubo, governor of the province, made careful arrangements and conducted the whole process, and conducted special research once every two days to study and solve major problems such as 120 first aid, drug supply, ICU beds, key population management, rural rescue preparation, and led a team to conduct field research in medical institutions, which laid the foundation and created conditions for a stable and orderly peak in the province.

The provincial headquarters judges the epidemic situation every day, refines the tasks and measures, and does all the work in detail. At present, the province has reached a peak of stability, the number of positive severe cases has been decreasing day by day, normal medical services have been gradually restored, and the epidemic prevention and control has been smoothly and orderly.

Expansion fever clinic

Effectively cope with the peak of medical treatment

On January 14th, the reporter went to the fever clinic of the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, and the nurses were on duty. Compared with a week ago, the number of patients decreased significantly.

24-hour fever clinic, online and online fever clinic, and triage of emergency patients to specialist should not exceed 6 hours … Recently, the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University has taken many measures to expand the capacity and increase the number of patients with fever, so as to ensure the smooth medical channels for patients with fever.

"In order to meet the medical needs of the masses to the greatest extent and fully ensure the smooth channels for fever treatment, the headquarters office requires medical institutions in the province to set up fever clinics (consultation rooms) to announce to the public to ensure that fever clinics are open 24 hours a day, and they are not allowed to close or stop the clinic without authorization." According to the relevant person in charge of the medical treatment team of the headquarters, in early December 2022, hospitals above the second level and township health centers (community health service institutions) in the province all set up fever clinics, and adopted measures such as expanding fever clinics, increasing the strength of medical staff, and rationally diverting medical staff to effectively alleviate the pressure of fever clinics. Conditional secondary and tertiary hospitals set up children’s areas to quickly triage and treat patients with common fever, adopt the combination of online and offline, improve the graded diagnosis and treatment service network of patients in COVID-19, open a green channel for transshipment, and arrange timely treatment in corresponding specialties for those who need specialist diagnosis and treatment or hospitalization.

At the same time, patients with medical needs can go to the nearest community health service institutions for treatment. Patients with serious illness and beyond the ability of primary diagnosis and treatment can go to the second-and third-level hospitals in their jurisdiction or be referred to designated hospitals according to their illness. In addition, the second-and third-tier hospitals in the province have opened online fever clinics, which provide citizens with relevant services such as consultation, prescription, drug purchase and medication guidance 24 hours a day, which can conveniently and efficiently allocate medical resources across regions and improve the efficiency of using high-quality medical resources.

As of January 14, 560 medical institutions above the second level in the province have set up fever clinics, and 1481 primary medical institutions have set up fever clinics. The peak number of consultations in the province’s fever clinics exceeded 150,000, and it has steadily dropped to more than 20,000. The relevant person in charge of the medical treatment team of the headquarters said that the peak of this round of epidemic infection in our province has passed.

Optimize the allocation of medical resources

Fully guarantee the treatment of critically ill patients.

After a week of high fever, cough, fatigue and muscle aches, Li Zhi, 85, was admitted to the intensive care unit of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine of the First People’s Hospital of Yunnan Province. After diagnosis, Li Zhishuang’s lung has diffuse ground glass shadow, which belongs to critically ill patients with infection in Covid-19. Coupled with basic diseases such as hypertension and gout, his condition deteriorates rapidly. Through targeted treatment such as high-flow ventilator, his condition has been improving.

Since the establishment of a three-level response echelon in the First Provincial Hospital, each department has set up an infection treatment ward in COVID-19. The departments of respiratory and critical care medicine, infectious diseases and liver diseases are responsible for the guidance of the hospital’s departments on the treatment of Covid-19 infected patients and ensuring the resources for the treatment of critically ill patients.

In the past few days, all parts of our province have strengthened the preparation of medical treatment resources, rapidly expanded the number of critically ill beds, enriched and expanded the treatment team, set up an emergency medical support team, optimized the referral process mechanism, and medical staff at all levels raced against time to save lives and played a set of "combination boxing" to treat critically ill patients:

—— 281 general hospitals above the second level in the province set up intensive care departments according to the standards, strengthened the preparation of intensive care resources, and added intensive care equipment such as ventilators.

—— Strengthen the setting of ICU beds in general hospitals above Grade II, speed up the expansion and transformation of ICU beds in other specialties, co-ordinate the bed resources in internal medicine, surgery and other wards of the hospital, and reserve beds for intensive care step by step.

—— Organize internal, external, pediatric and emergency specialists to carry out intensive professional emergency training in comprehensive ICU, and effectively expand the intensive care team.

—— Breaking the routine, leading by doctors specializing in severe and respiratory diseases, with specialists participating in the formation of intensive care teams to ensure the quality and safety of intensive care.

-The province has set up 50 critical care teams, each with 27 members.

-Timely production of emergency and severe video teaching materials, accumulated training of more than 180,000 medical staff, and rapid improvement of the critical care capacity of medical institutions at all levels.

-Mobilize village groups and social forces, carry out grid management, find out the base of key populations, establish a guarantee system, implement classified management of key populations, grasp the health status of key populations, find patients with severe tendency in COVID-19 as early as possible, and carry out early treatment nearby as soon as possible to reduce the incidence of severe diseases.

-Establish a piecemeal responsibility system for severe treatment, and implement the provincial-level Baozhou City, Baozhou County, and Baoxiang Town. Severe patients who exceed the ability of primary diagnosis and treatment will be referred to higher-level hospitals for treatment as soon as possible. Counties and urban areas reserve referral and transfer vehicles step by step, and make overall plans at the county level to smooth the referral channel. Establish a patrol and consultation system for emergency support teams for severe treatment to ensure that the treatment of severe patients is orderly, powerful and effective.

—— Expand the treatment resources to achieve "all due", strengthen the treatment force to achieve "all treatment should be done", move forward the prevention and control barrier to ensure "early treatment", and there is no run on severe treatment resources in the province.

Pass forward

Continuously improve the prevention and control ability of rural epidemic situation

Rural areas are an important gateway for epidemic prevention and control and the "last mile" to ensure people’s health. "Forward Pass" is the key work of epidemic prevention and control in urban and rural areas of our province. Combined with the actual situation, our province actively carries out early preparation, early investigation, early identification, early intervention and early referral to comprehensively promote the prevention and control of epidemic situation in rural areas. At present, the situation of medical treatment in rural areas of the province is generally stable, and the epidemic peak has passed one after another.

Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture set up a patrol team to prevent severe diseases, and carried out patrol dynamic monitoring for people aged 65 and over with 8 basic diseases; Yanshan County, Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, established the responsibility system for the guarantee of people living alone, and strengthened the monitoring and follow-up of health status; Xinping County, Yuxi City, conducts classified management training for grass-roots medical staff, and sends doctors to serve at the station …

In order to prevent mild illness from turning into severe illness, 118 counties in the province have built close county medical communities to give full play to the role of leading hospitals, greatly expand ICU beds and enhance the ability of severe treatment. At present, the province has organized patrol teams to enter villages and households, dispatched 1,370 patrol teams to serve and patrol in villages, comprehensively investigated 5,264,300 elderly people over 65 years old, and achieved accurate classification and identification. On-site activation of 28,000 village team members and sinking of 6,500 cadres and households, and high-frequency follow-up of key populations.

There are 1481 fever clinics in township hospitals (community health service centers) in the province, and 13588 village clinics should be open. At present, more than 90% township hospitals can provide oxygen therapy services for the masses. Organized more than 50,000 grassroots medical and health personnel in the province to participate in a series of trainings on medical treatment of infection in Covid-19. Township hospitals and rural family doctors in the province provided 1,425,800 person-times of health services and distributed "health and epidemic prevention kits". Accurate distribution of antipyretic and analgesic drugs, cough medicine, small molecular antiviral drugs, raw materials and formulas of traditional Chinese medicine decoction to the grassroots. 12 kinds of hospital preparations were urgently approved, and 46 kinds of hospital preparations were included in the drug list (9 kinds of ethnic medicines such as Yi, Miao and Dai).

The relevant person in charge of the epidemic prevention and control team of the headquarters said that with the normal operation of borders and ports resumed, in order to prevent the risk of new mutant input, the province strengthened virus gene sequencing, closely monitored and found new mutant input in time, and quickly responded to disposal.

Dawn is just ahead, and persistence is victory. Jiang Xu, head of the medical treatment team of the headquarters, said that in the next step, our province will improve the diagnosis and treatment measures, increase drug procurement, do a good job in ensuring blood supply, ensure the smooth flow of the "120" call for help, continue to promote vaccination for the elderly, and earnestly safeguard the lives and health of the people.