Precise Community-Based Public Health Management: Crucial Experience Responding to COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

Abstract

Introduction: Facing a grim public challenge caused by COVID-19, many countries decide to live with it for a long time, whereas China continues to enforce precise community-based public health management. This paper summarized China’s approaches and aimed to provide illumination for health services decision-makers. Methods: We systematically reviewed the construction of precise community-based public health management from three aspects: organizational structure, service content, and flexible adjustment, and summed up four essential elements for success. Then, we selected 9 typical countries to compare their non-pharmaceutical strategies and daily new cases. Results: China’s community-based public health management has a clear four-level organizational structure. It has worked on infection control, surveillance for new cases, management of contacts, health education, medicare service, outdoor environment disinfection, and living material supply in different stages, and the daily new confirmed cases in Wuhan sustainedly declined to zero. The outbreak was relatively well contained in China, Italy, and Germany as of June 2020, as they adopted stricter movement restrictions, social distance, and patient tracking. Conclusion: China’s experience has proved the feasibility of non-pharmaceutical strategies responding to COVID-19. The precise community-based public health management strategy can be considered, as it’s pretty much the same as public health and social measures (PHSMs) advocated by WHO.