United efforts help nationwide battle
Quick action, technology and even cartoons play key roles
Editor’s note: Some areas of China have developed creative, decisive ways to curb the spread of novel coronavirus pneumonia, which have proved effective. Here, we take a look at their stories.
Dawa Yangchen, a Tibetan woman, is proud of the efforts she has made in cyberspace to fight the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak.
Through online networks, she has shared knowledge in several Tibetan dialects of prevention methods.
“The Tibetan language is enriched with many local dialects and it is very important to deliver prevention know-how in every one of them,” said Dawa Yangchen, who comes from the Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan autonomous prefecture in Qinghai province.
She is one of a number of young Tibetans who are helping battle the virus through multimedia channels.
Dawa Yangchen, who graduated from St. Petersburg State University in Russia, majored in journalism and communication. She is also interested in Tibetan linguistic studies.
In addition to giving advice on disease prevention, she and Yangla Gesang, another Tibetan woman, have been working together to produce cartoons and voice messages in different dialects via a range of social media networks.
Dawa Yangchen said that on Jan 29 they posted their first work, a cartoon about novel coronavirus pneumonia made in the five main Tibetan dialects of U’tsang, Kham, Amdo, Nagchu and Gyalrong, which are also spoken in the Tibet autonomous region and Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.
The cartoon, first posted on the WeChat account Shanmeilongshi, had been viewed more than 80,000 times by Feb 16.
Volunteers were recruited online to read messages, and in view of unreliable telecommunication signals in rural areas, the team began to produce voice messages in nine Tibetan dialects.
Phuntsok Drolma, a netizen, said of the post: “It’s great! I had been dreaming that one day Tibetans from different areas would be able to communicate with each other easily. Thanks to your great efforts, we now have the opportunity to learn about disease prevention in our own dialects.”
Fellow netizen “Million”, said, “I like the cartoon, it’s easy for elderly people and children to follow and I hope my fellow Tibetans will protect their loved ones from infection.”
Dronkar, another Tibetan, has been busy producing short videos to deliver her message about the outbreak.
“Due to geographical and communication barriers, many Tibetans living in remote areas still lack basic hygiene knowledge, such as the need to wash their hands and wear face masks,” said the 34-yearold, who comes from Hongyuan county in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture, Sichuan.
Previously, Dronkar, who is highly experienced in sharing knowledge about disease prevention, worked as a volunteer for a local AIDS prevention organization for many years.
In the past two weeks, she has produced more than 10 stories for short videos fronted by a local actor.
Norbu Dradul, founder and director of Black Tent Film Studio in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, said he is proud of those working to prevent disease at such a challenging time.
“Fun, creativity and being close to everyday life are the key points made in the videos we produce, which have caught the attention of local people and have been well received,” he added.
In Qianjiang, Hubei, which has a population of 1 million and lies 130 kilometers west of Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicenter and provincial capital, efforts to contain the virus appear to have worked well.
As of Wednesday, 197 confirmed cases had been reported in Qianjiang, the second-lowest total in the province. Shennongjia, a forestry area, has the lowest number of cases in Hubei, with 11 patients confirmed with the disease among a population of 80,000.
Wu Zuyun, the Party chief of Qianjiang, who has led the city’s fight against the virus since last month, attributed the successful efforts to a “timely response and strict restrictions”.
The city had introduced “social distancing” and isolated 32 suspected cases — the first reported in Qianjiang — on Jan 17, Wu said. Three days later, leading infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan announced that the virus could spread among humans.
Wu said: “The mayor and I both thought this was a very serious situation and that we needed to take pre-emptive measures before things became worse,” adding that they felt huge pressure in taking such action before human-to-human transmission had been confirmed.
“It’s like an enemy. Before you come to know it well, it’s best to remain still and besiege it,” Wu said, referring to action taken by the city to introduce a lockdown and ban public gatherings, while isolating the first suspected cases quickly.
Each household is also only allowed to send one person to buy necessities every three days.
An employee, surnamed Yang, from the Dujiagou community office in Qianjiang, said, “People were against the strict measures at first, thinking the virus was far away and that prevention work had nothing to do with them.”
She said she tells residents to go home when she sees anyone on the streets, and after an extensive publicity campaign, people have been cooperating.
Information about the virus has been distributed in the city via television programs, short videos, social media platforms and even through loudspeakers.
Mass screenings against the virus have been carried out, during which 37,092 people were found to have had some type of contact with Wuhan. Among these, 470 had a fever and were quarantined immediately. Some hotels and public buildings have been transformed into quarantine facilities.
The strict and rapid action taken in Qianjiang has set an example for the rest of Hubei, with the provincial government recently releasing a notice requesting other areas to learn from the measures adopted by the city.
Meanwhile, in Zhejiang, one of the provinces outside Hubei most severely hit by the outbreak, advanced technology, including big data, has been playing a vital role in the prevention and control of the virus and in recovery efforts.
A developed region where the digital economy has developed rapidly in recent years, Zhejiang has rolled out a series of measures with the help of emerging technologies aimed at containing the virus and encouraging the resumption of business. The measures have been termed “one map, one code and one index”.
In a video conference on Feb 14, Yuan Jiajun, the provincial governor, stressed the importance of controlling the epidemic “precisely and intelligently”, adding that there should be “strict management and orderly operations” amid the outbreak.
Four days earlier, the authorities in Zhejiang released a map detailing the latest information about the virus through data collected from around the province.
The provincial government assessed the chances of people in all county-level regions becoming infected by using five colors to mark areas with different levels of risk. The information was based on the total number of confirmed patients, the proportion of patients to all residents, cases arising from gatherings and the number of new confirmed cases over the past three days.
The map is adjusted according to any changes that are indicated.
Gao Junlin, who lives in Yuhang district, Hangzhou, said, “I think the map helps with ways to curb the virus.”
When the map was initially released on Feb 11, Yuhang was identified as an area with a high risk of infection.
“The management of my community was strengthened and stricter measures were taken to control the movement of people and vehicles when the map was released,” Gao said.
She added that the action taken has reassured her, as it shows the authorities are on top of the situation and are confident of halting the virus.
“The map was produced based on data collected from the regions, which means the government is aware of the number of confirmed cases, the proportion of patients to all residents, and the causes,” she said.
When a new map was released in the afternoon on Feb 19, the risk level in Yuhang was lowered to “moderate” from “high”.
As of Feb 19, some 84 percent of county-level regions in Zhejiang had been identified as either “comparatively low” or “low-risk” areas, with the government fully supporting companies resuming operations as long as the epidemic was under strict control.
In Hangzhou, the provincial capital, a health code system has been adopted, which is being promoted nationwide. The move is another successful application of big data technology in the province’s management of the outbreak.
Developed by Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which is headquartered in Hangzhou, the system is being used to assess people’s health status according to their recent travel history and health information, which they provide online.
Based on the analysis results, a QR code marked green, yellow or red is issued. Only people who are issued green codes are allowed to return to work and travel throughout Hangzhou.
By Feb 18, more than 15 million people had registered their information and had received health codes online.
To pinpoint areas lagging behind in restarting production, Zhejiang released the country’s first index on work restarting, based on data received from the province’s 90 county-level regions on Feb 17.
Taking the number of enterprises in different industries that have restarted operations, the index provides an overview of the situation and data for authorities to take action to stimulate economic development.
Pan Yigang, chief researcher at the Zhejiang Development and Planning Institute, said: “Adequate data is necessary to draw up policies for the resumption of production. The index is an example of Zhejiang’s digital governance.”