Will normalized nucleic acid testing become a new form of epidemic prevention to replace large-scale sealing and control?
Written by | Song Kunlun
Source | "Medical Community" public account
According to Xinhua News Agency, since May 3, the nucleic acid testing in Beijing has been free for citizens, and the required expenses are jointly borne by financial funds and medical insurance funds. At the same time, the layout of nucleic acid sampling outlets in the city will be further optimized to ensure that sufficient scientific sampling outlets are set up in each district and announced to the public in a timely manner.
Beijing municipality also stipulates that from May 5, all kinds of public places in the city, taking public transportation, etc., must hold a negative 7-day nucleic acid test certificate. Where there are specific epidemic prevention requirements, the organization and management may shorten the nucleic acid testing time requirements.
According to the "medical community", many cities have recently announced the supporting travel restriction policies of the normalized nucleic acid testing program, and cities such as Hangzhou in Zhejiang, Huainan in Anhui, Wuhan in Hubei, Nanchang in Jiangxi, as well as Shanghai, Shandong and other provinces have announced relevant notices.
Free nucleic acids
Do not affect travel
Taking Hangzhou as an example, according to the latest announcement, 10,000 free nucleic acid sampling points have been laid out in the city, and the public can select nucleic acid detection sampling points through clients such as AutoNavi Map and Hangzhou Home.
According to the regulations, citizens who do not complete the code on time will be reminded or assigned a pop-up window when scanning the code of the place, and they are not allowed to enter public places and are not allowed to take public transportation.
Similarly:
Beijing Municipality stipulates that from May 5, entering all kinds of public places and taking public transportation must hold a 7-day nucleic acid certificate.
Wuhu City, Anhui Province, stipulates that the first normalized nucleic acid test will be completed on April 27, and nucleic acid will be completed every 5 days, otherwise social activities will be restricted and public places will not be allowed to enter public places or take public transportation.
Shandong Province stipulates that from May 5, for those who enter various places and participate in gathering activities, in traffic places, check the negative nucleic acid test certificate within 7 days of entering the personnel, and in medical institutions, check the negative nucleic acid test certificate within 48 hours for all medical personnel.
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In these areas, while announcing the normalized nucleic acid testing and epidemic prevention policy, free nucleic acid testing points have been announced so that the public can actively cooperate with the epidemic prevention measures.
More and more cities are following up and emulating this policy.
Citizens complain about inconvenience
Official optimization is gradually being made
Free nucleic acid testing, laid out tens of thousands of sampling points, and distributed in residential areas, stations, subway stations (surrounding), shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels and restaurants, etc., to a certain extent, in accordance with the principle of nearby convenience for citizens to test. However, many citizens still encounter inconveniences.
First of all, it is faced with the problem of "continuing to do", that is, some citizens encounter the problem of holding a 48-hour negative nucleic acid certificate before doing a new round of nucleic acid testing. According to Weibo netizen @Dream***, "to the nucleic acid testing point, only by holding a 48-hour negative certificate of nucleic acid can you enter", that is, there is a "shelf life of continuation", which requires citizens to do nucleic acid testing every 48 hours if they want to achieve basic travel, and must not be interrupted.
The image comes from the internet
Secondly, according to the announced duty hours of some nucleic acid testing points, most nucleic acid testing points are "half-day business" and are in the working hours of many office workers. Some citizens said, "I want to do it at meal time, just when others are resting; others are on duty, and I happen to be at work."
In addition, some citizens encounter the phenomenon of delayed issuance of nucleic acid test results, in order to avoid this problem, they have to do it every day, and have equated doing nucleic acid with the daily behavior of eating and sleeping.
Finally, there is the problem of queuing. In the process of promoting the early implementation policy, many people encountered the dilemma of queuing at the monitoring point for more than 1 hour even if they skipped their shift to go out for nucleic acid testing.
In response to the above problems, Hangzhou responded that it is being solved, for example, for the queuing problem, the "busy reminder" function has been launched in the relevant client to solve the crowding problems that may be faced; in view of the phenomenon of delayed issuance of nucleic acid test results, it is proposed that "nucleic acid sampling can travel normally".
The image comes from Weibo
Financial funds and medical insurance funds are borne jointly
Shandong province is the first of many provinces to expand the coverage of this policy throughout the province. Shandong's notice clearly states that since May 4, nucleic acid testing is free for all personnel, and the required expenses are jointly borne by financial funds and medical insurance funds, of which the nucleic acid testing costs of fever diagnosis (sentinel) patients and inpatients are paid by the medical insurance fund in accordance with the original regulations, and the rest of the costs are borne by the finance.
Almost at the same time, Beijing issued a notice saying that nucleic acid testing will be free for citizens, and the required costs will be borne by financial funds and medical insurance funds.
Why should the government carry out free normalized nucleic acid testing for all? Cao Heping, a professor at the School of Economics at Peking University, recently told the Health Times, "This is the current way to deal with the comprehensive, medium- and long-term social cost of the epidemic prevention in Aumechroon." ”
The WeChat public account "Chuanyue Global Macro" was set up by the macro team of soochow Securities Research Institute, and pointed out in an article entitled "Economic Account of Normalized Nucleic Acid Testing" that the purpose of promoting normalized nucleic acid testing is to reduce the economic losses caused by frequently sealed cities.
The article mentions that due to the high spread of Omilon, as of April 30, 123 cities in 29 provincial-level administrative regions have been involved in the epidemic, of which the population of cities announced in April for lockdown reached 180 million, accounting for 13% of the national population. Since April coincided with the outbreak of the epidemic in China, if it is assumed that the national epidemic-related population will remain in this proportion every month in the future, and the normalized nucleic acid testing requires residents in these cities to have nucleic acid every 48 hours, the expenditure required for normalized nucleic acid testing in the country will be 20-50 billion yuan in one month; if this policy is extended to the first- and second-tier cities in the country, the upper limit of the cost of normalized nucleic acids per month will reach 100 billion yuan.
The article believes that what must be considered here is the opportunity cost of not carrying out normalized nucleic acid testing in the event of an epidemic, and this opportunity cost is the economic loss of sealing. It is estimated that from the experience of successive lockdowns in China after the end of the epidemic in Wuhan, the (local) economic losses caused by the two-week comprehensive lockdown are about 32% of the city's GDP in the current month, and the losses of partial lockdowns are much smaller, about 10%.
Yu Chuanhua, a professor of epidemiology and health statistics at Wuhan University, said in an interview, "The key to normalizing nucleic acid testing is to grasp a degree, and in the case of a large risk of epidemic transmission, normalized testing is a very economical, rapid and effective prevention and control measure." However, if the risk of the epidemic is not high, there are some problems that are also worth considering. ”
However, in the face of more and more cities promoting this policy, it is inevitable that people will worry about whether the financial and medical insurance funds can afford such a high cost. Some experts believe that additional financial tools may be needed to support it, and even in addition to allowing residents to bear part of the cost, the issuance of special government bonds is an important and feasible option.
Source: Medical community
Editor-in-charge: Song Kunlun
Proofreader: Zang Hengjia