Prevention and control strategy of COVID-19 in the "Internet +" era

Yu-Fei Zhai , Hua-Nuo Feng ,2, Guo-Tian Lin , Liu-Ting Lin , Fan Zhang ✉

1. School of Public Health, Hainan Medical University，Hainan Haikou 571199，China 2. Hainan Health School，Hainan Haikou 571199，China

Keywords:Internet +COVID-19 Prevention and control

ABSTRACT Since December 2019, several cases of coronavirus infected disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. COVID-19 has been rapid spread in other provinces of China and abroad. The prevention and control of outbreak is particularly important. Based on the development of network and medical and health resources in the context of the "Internet +" era, this article discusses strategies for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in the "Internet +" era, and provides a reference for the implementation of COVID-19 prevention and control.

According to statistics, in the past 30 years, the world discovered about 40 emerging infectious diseases, and half of these diseases are viral, 75 percent of them are animal-derived [1]. Since emerging infectious diseases, such as Severe acute respiratory syndrome（SARS）, Highly pathogenic avian influenza (H1N1, H7N9, etc.) with the features of zoonotic, spread fast, etiology unknown, and complicated mode of transmission, it is a big challenge for the disease prevention and control. From December 2019, many coronavirus infected disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases were reported in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, and then other provinces in China and worldwide also reported a large number of cases. COVID-19 has been included in the Class B but managed as Class A infectious diseases by the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases [2].

1. Current status of COVID-19

According to the COVID-19 Diagnosis and Treatment Plan (Seventh Edition) issued by the National Health Commission on March 3, 2020, the source of infection are COVID-19 patients. Respiratory droplet is the main route of transmission but it can also be transmitted by contact. The added content is "Because coronavirus can be isolated from feces and urine, attention should be paid to the aerosol or contact spread of feces and urine to environmental pollution. "By 08:53 am on April 30, 2020, there were 84,373 confirmed cases and 10 suspected cases of COVID-19nationwide, 1664 cases imported overseas, the cumulative number of death was 4,643, the cumulative mortality rate was 5.50%, and the cumulative number of cured was 78,785，the cumulative cure rate was 93.38% [3].A total of 3,135,641confirmed cases were reported abroad, and a total of 926,247 cases were cured, the cumulative cure rate was 29.54%.The cumulative number of death was 223,535 and the cumulative mortality rate was7.13% [3].

2. Prevention and control strategies for emerging infectious diseases in the "Internet +" Era

2.1 Information exchange methods in the "Internet +" era

According to the data released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) for the 44th "Statistical Report on Internet Development in China" [4] on August 30, 2019, data collected by June 2019, the Chinese Internet users reached 854 million, an increase of 25.98 million compared with the end of 2018;Internet popularizing rate was 61.2%, and rose 1.6% compared with the end of 2018; Chinese mobile phone users reached 847 million with an increase of 29.84 million compared with the end of 2018; the proportion of mobile phone Internet users of all internet users reached 99.1%, and increased 0.5% compared with the end of 2018. It can be seen that the internet has become an important way for people to obtain and exchange information.

2.2 Early warning of emerging infectious diseases

2.2.1 The means and importance of early warning

According to the requirements of Eleventh Five-Year Plan of Public Emergency Response System Establishment, China established a national emergency warning information release system and officially started operations in May 2015. The system connects countries, provinces and cities and county-level government departments. State Council on the Overall Strengthening of Emergency Management Opinions stated that: ‘To establish all kinds of public health emergencies of early warning system by the coordination of governments at all levels and different departments are responsible for the establishment, to establish the early warning information release and exchange system, to fully use the radio, television internet, text messages, phone, publicity truck and other means to timely release the early warning information.’ After the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, in addition to traditional channels such as radio, television, text messages, tweeters, display screens, etc., mobile apps, websites, new media and other forms were also widely used in China to issue the early warning information to the public, social media, emergency responsible, grassroots information officer, enterprises, institutions and other social organizations.

Proactive early warning of public health emergencies helps prevent the expansion of hazards or wins the initiative to handle it afterwards. The development of online new media in the "Internet +" era has pointed out the direction of the early warning of emerging infectious diseases. Taking advantage of the Internet and taking advantage of the technology, it is brave to innovate and promotes all-round innovations in concepts, content, means and mechanisms. Improve the effectiveness of early warning communication.

2.2.2 Diversified communication advantages of “Internet +” in early warning

Because the new Internet media such as WeChat, Weibo, and application have the advantages of rapid, accurate, and wide spread, making full use of the "Internet +" means such as new media and application can open up a wider channel for early warning release [5]. For example, when an early warning of COVID-19 outbreak is issued, you can locate the user's location, publish a personalized and focused regional outbreak, and provide the required timely warning information. In order to realize the joint release and collaborative sharing of various online media platforms, the people in the relevant areas are reminded to quickly take emergency measures to provide guarantee for timely preventive measures. After the epidemic situation is released, users can also seek help by uploading the local epidemic situation and reporting the symptoms from the media terminal. On the one hand, it can facilitate the surrounding public and emergency response personnel to quickly obtain the progress of the incident and make real-time feedback; on the other hand, through the analysis of the epidemic situation reported by multiple people, it can win valuable time for treatment and emergency treatment. Fully embodies the concept that everyone is the person responsible for epidemic prevention and all are direct reporters of the epidemic situation. This method can also be used for the international exchange of information and medical resources.

2.3 Health education of emerging infectious diseases

2.3.1 Content and importance of health education

Health education is mainly to spread medical and health science knowledge to the people through various education and communication methods [6], including common sense of health prevention, basic knowledge of infectious diseases, mental health education and identification ability. Timely and effective health education and publicity can promote the public to understand the correct knowledge of prevention and control, improve their awareness of prevention, to a certain extent, eliminate panic and anxiety, and provide protection for social health.

In the era of increasing popularity of the Internet, giving full play to the role of the Internet and new media platforms in health education publicity work can effectively improve the publicity effect.

Now it was the custom in those days for princes and princesses to be brought up by fairies, who loved them as their own children, and did not mind what inconvenience they put other people to for their sakes, for all the world as if they had been real mothers

2.3.2 The main problems of health education in the "Internet +" era

2.3.2.1 Information overloads and search difficulty

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, a large amount of relevant information has appeared on every major website platform every minute and every second, and it has intensified. This is the so-called "information explosion". It leads to too many or too few results from search engines.

2.3.2.2 Internet technology is not fully popularized

In recent years, the Internet has become more and more popular, but almost 38.8% [4] of the public are universally available, especially the middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas. The traditional prevention and control strategies are needed for this special population from house to house to ensure the prevention and control outcomes. This is also a problem in the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic, because at the early stage of COVID-19 outbreak, middle-aged and elderly people over the age of 45 were the major infected population, and those who refused to take effective protective measures such as wearing masks were mainly elderly.

2.3.2.3 Spread information without verification

Online information from articles is usually published directly on the Internet without censorship, which makes it difficult to verify the correctness and authenticity. In order to blindly promote these websites, the credibility of the information is poor and the quality is not high. During the emergence of COVID-19 epidemic, a lot of misleading information appeared, such as "people can take a bath with 56 hot water to fight the virus" and "Shuanghuanglian can prevent COVID-19". To a certain extent, the public blindly reprinted the misleading information and blindly believed it without conducting research caused a potential danger to the public's health.

2.4 Smart healthcare in the context of "Internet +" during the epidemic

Since the concept of "great health" was clearly put forward in the "The Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", people increasingly hope that the quality of diagnosis and treatment services can be substantially improved [7]. China has a large population, but medical and health resources are obviously insufficient. At the same time, due to the hug gap between urban and rural medical service levels and uneven distribution of medical resources, the medical service industry is accelerating its development toward the direction of intelligence and informatization in the "Internet +" era. And the emergence of smart medical care has broken the restraint of traditional medical care. Not only to solve complicated issues such as the doctor of traditional medicine, but also the continuous improvement of medical technology makes it possible to break incurable diseases. Smart healthcare aims to conduct medical information inquiry, establish electronic files, and carry out disease risk assessment, conduct online consultation on diseases, remote consultation and other related remedial work based on the Internet and the existing medical system [8].

2.4.2"Internet +" online medical treatment can prevent offline cross infection

During the outbreak of COVID-19, the shortage of medical and health resources across the country, especially the hard-to-find phenomenon, became more apparent. In addition, the influx of a large number of patients into the hospital also significantly increased the risk of cross-infection in the hospital. Some health websites and mobile application united hospital have launched online free clinics to effectively control and alleviate the above problems.

2.4.3 Online training and meetings can reduce the risk of clustering

The fourth press conference of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic prevention and control work held in Hangzhou mentioned that an enterprise had a cluster outbreak caused by a meeting, and 11 participants were infected at the 30-person meeting [9]. In order to reduce the risk of crowded training and meetings leading to increased mutual communication, smart medical systems can be used for online training and meetings to achieve the entire process of "online" and "handheld"[10], reducing unnecessary on-site processing. The interaction between medical personnel, medical institutions, and medical equipment can be realized from the Internet platform, and the digitization and networking of information can be gradually achieved, while improving the utilization rate of information while achieving medical sharing, saving resources and reducing costs.

2.5 Functions of government and administrative departments in the "Internet +" era

2.5.1 "Internet +" information era requires government-led

The emergence of COVID-19 will inevitably attract the attention of the government and relevant health administrative departments. According to the document, "Notice on Strengthening the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia Outbreaks of COVID-19 in Primary Medical and Health Institutions (Letter [2020] 72 ) "[11], under the leadership of the local party committee government, health and health administrative departments, and under the guidance of disease control agencies and other professional institutions, community health service centers (stations) and township health centers, village clinics and other grass-roots medical and health institutions must actively cooperate with townships ( Sub-district) and village (neighborhood) committees are responsible for the prevention and control of epidemics in urban communities, rural areas, and urbanrural junctions. Especially in the "Internet +" information age, the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic must be led by the government, and medical websites at all levels should follow up to develop a correct and effective network environment for emerging infectious diseases. The establishment of the official website should be focused. In order to expand the coverage, the legal websites with great influence should also set the link of the thematic official website on the home page.

2.5.2 Establishment and improvement of the disease surveillance network system

A well functioned disease surveillance network system will rapidly improve the ability to monitor emerging infectious diseases in terms of organizational systems, personnel, equipment and technology. Through the disease monitoring grid accessible from top to bottom, the monitoring investigation can discover new sources of infection or new pathogens and influencing factors in a timely manner, and quickly take effective measures to control their spread and spread. China has established and improved linkage of global information platform for the prevention and controls [12].The monitoring system can timely exchange information and share experiences with other countries on emerging infectious diseases prevention and control, to prevent the outbreak of large-scale diffusion. For example, after confirming that the pathogen of COVID-19 in Wuhan was a novel coronavirus, researchers of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) officially launched the new coronavirus national science and technology resource service system on January 24 [13]. The service system integrates the global coronavirus genes and large genome data. The establishment of a global big data platform of coronavirus enables global resource sharing.

3. Summary

The prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases is an eternal major issue for human beings [14]. "Internet +" era provides mankind convenience but inevitably with problems and challenges. In the "Internet +" era, the courage to innovate and explore the use of economical resources can be invincible. Only by taking the principle of "safety, openness, and cooperation", focusing and serving the overall situation, taking comprehensive prevention and control measures, could we win the race against the COVID-19 epidemic [15], and win the battle.