Per reporter: Huang Mingyang Per editor: Liu Yanmei
From Chinese New Year's Eve to 15, in the expectation of the "inflection point" of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rat has officially ended.
At the epicenter of the epidemic, on February 9, the Hubei Provincial Health Commission announced for the first time the case fatality rate of cities and states in the province. Among them, Tianmen is 5.08%, ranking first in the province.
Source: Hubei Provincial Health Commission (as of 24:00 on February 8) Collation chart: Urban Evolution
According to the latest data released today, as of 24:00 on February 9, Hubei has reported a total of 29,631 cases of new crown pneumonia, with 871 deaths, and a case fatality rate of 2.94%. The case fatality rate of 4.61% in Tianmen has slowed down from yesterday, but it is still higher than the 4.03% in Wuhan, where the epidemic is most severe.
In terms of confirmed cases, Tianmen ranks fourth from the bottom among the 17 cities and prefectures in Hubei; but in terms of case fatality rate, Tianmen has been outstanding in the province, reaching 8.6% on February 3.
As a municipality directly under the jurisdiction of Hubei Province, Tianmen had a permanent population of only 1.272 million in 2018, ranking fifth from the bottom in the province; in the same year, the GDP was 59.115 billion yuan, ranking second from the bottom, only higher than the Shennongjia Forest Area with a population of less than 80,000. What is the real situation in this "obscure" city?
<h2>"City to Countryside"</h2>
On the first day of the first lunar month, two days after the "lockdown" of Wuhan, Tianmen began to report confirmed cases. Two days later, on 27 January, deaths began to appear locally.
Also from this day on, the number of confirmed cases in Tianmen has been rising, and the number of deaths has also begun to increase. The local case fatality rate, which jumped from zero to 8.7 percent on January 27, has been hovering around nearly 7 to 9 percent until February 4.
It is worth noting that although the confirmed cases have always ranked low in Hubei Province, Tianmen not only ranks high in the case fatality rate, but also has a significantly small number of cured cases before.
Data as of 24:00 on February 8 Image source: Daily Economic News
However, this trend is gradually improving.
Outside Hubei, the new cases of new coronary pneumonia have dropped for 6 consecutive days, and the effect of the early epidemic prevention and control measures has gradually emerged. As of 24:00 on February 9, the national case fatality rate was 2.26%, and the case fatality rate outside Hubei was 0.35%.
In Hubei Province, except for Wuhan, the case fatality rate in the rest of the region is 1.49%, and the case fatality rate in Wuhan has dropped to 4.03%. "Obviously, as medical staff from all over the country arrived in Wuhan, the support became greater, and the case fatality rate began to decline." CCTV previously reported.
In this context, the case fatality rate of Tianmen has also gradually decreased. As of 24:00 on February 9, this figure has dropped to 4.61%. There were no new deaths on the same day, and 9 new cases were discharged from hospital.
It is worth noting that in Tianmen City, the confirmed cases have covered almost all urban areas and townships. According to the data released in the past five days, the new cases in the local urban area account for 40%, 44%, 25%, 50% and 35% of the whole area of Tianmen respectively - the proportion of new townships and towns is more than half and more.
On February 7, Wang Xiaodong, deputy secretary of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee and governor of Hubei Province, pointed out that the current epidemic situation in Hubei Has shown a "new trend of urban to rural expansion and imported to community infection". Tianmen is a typical representative.
<h2>Why Heaven's Gate? </h2>
On the Jianghan Plain of the Pingchuan River, Tianmen Mountain rises from the ground.
Tianmen is named after the mountain, only more than 100 kilometers away from the provincial capital Wuhan, and the high-speed rail only takes half an hour and takes less than two hours to drive.
Image source: Dr. Lilac
Like Huanggang and Xiaogan, Tianmen is also a member of Wuhan's "8+1" urban circle.
Because of this, in the context of Wuhan's GDP accounting for nearly 40% of Hubei's GDP in 2018, the intensity of the flow of people between Tianmen and Wuhan has increased the difficulty of local epidemic prevention and control.
Image source: Baidu Map Insight
It can be seen that this year's Spring Festival, the flow of people moving in in the early stage of Tianmen reached a peak around January 21.
If you further focus your gaze and move into the specific source of the flow of people in Tianmen, the characteristics are more obvious. According to Baidu migration data, since the first day of the Spring Festival (January 10), guangzhou and Wuhan have been in the top two cities for a long time in the proportion of people who have moved to Tianmen.
(Proportion of migration to source: the ratio of the number of people moving into the current area from xx land to the total population of the current area) Data source: Baidu Map Insight Collation Mapping: Urban Evolution Theory
Since January 16, the proportion of people moving into Tianmen from the long distance of Guangzhou has gradually declined. By January 23, Guangzhou had fallen to the 7th place of origin of Tianmen for two consecutive days.
In contrast, the proportion of Wuhan has gone all the way up. On January 15, Wuhan took over from Guangzhou and became the first place to move into the source of Tianmen. By January 23, the day of the "lockdown" of Wuhan, the proportion from Wuhan to Tianmen had even exceeded 1/3 of all the people who moved in that day.
Yang Chen, a native of Tianmen, told Uncle Cheng that in addition to "many people returning to Tianmen from Wuhan", in his view, "medical resources are relatively insufficient, which may also be one of the reasons for the high mortality rate in Tianmen".
Public information shows that there are only 2 top three hospitals in Tianmen City. In addition to the First People's Hospital of Tianmen City, the other is the Tianmen City Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital.
"In the early stage, many cities and counties around Wuhan were difficult to do confirmed testing. Many suspected cases in Tianmen are also difficult to diagnose because there are no conditions. Yang Chen said.
Among the nucleic acid testing institutions that can carry out nucleic acid testing for the new coronavirus in the province announced by the Hubei Provincial Health Commission on February 5, there are 25 in Wuhan, and there are 4 to 5 in Huangshi, Shiyan, Xiangyang, Yichang, Jingzhou and other cities. In the four cities of Xianning, Ezhou, Xiantao and Tianmen, only one hospital can carry out nucleic acid testing.
In the "list of third-party institutions", 12 of the 13 companies that can carry out nucleic acid testing are in Wuhan and 1 in Huangshi.
<h2>"One province and one city"</h2>
In fact, not only Tianmen, but also Ezhou's covid-19 case fatality rate once surpassed That of Wuhan, ranking second in the province after Tianmen. As of 24:00 on February 9, Ezhou's case fatality rate increased slightly from the previous day, ranking third in Hubei.
At first glance, in addition to having only one hospital available for nucleic acid testing, the two cities of Ezhou and Tianmen actually have a lot in common.
On the map, Ezhou and Tianmen are similar in area, and they are both "small cities" crammed into the cracks between several "big hunks".
The two have similar population sizes. At the end of 2018, there were only two cities in Hubei Province, Wuhan and Yichang, with more permanent residents than the registered population. Among the other 15 cities and prefectures, Ezhou has a permanent population of only 1.078 million, ranking last like Tianmen. The permanent population of the two is only close to the "fraction" of Wuhan.
Population size of cities and states in Hubei in 2018 Data source: 2019 Hubei Statistical Yearbook Collation chart: Urban Evolution
In terms of economic strength, Ezhou and Tianmen also rank low. Among them, Tianmen ranks second from the bottom, only higher than the Shennongjia Forest Area with a population of less than 80,000.
Source: 2019 Hubei Statistical Yearbook Collation Chart: Urban Evolution
As of 24:00 on February 9, from the perspective of the nationwide case fatality rate, similar to Ezhou and Tianmen, there are many "obscure" cities that deserve attention.
In Guangdong, there is only one death, not in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, where the number of confirmed cases exceeds 300, but in Zhaoqing, where there are only 14 confirmed cases.
In Henan, the city with the most confirmed cases is Xinyang. The cumulative number of deaths in Henan is 6, of which 2 are in Nanyang, 1 is in Pingdingshan, and 3 are to be identified.
In Heilongjiang, seven deaths occurred in Suihua (3), Shuangyashan (2), Daqing (1) and Qiqihar (1).
In Jilin, the only 1 death occurred in Siping, where only 12 cases were confirmed...
Of course, there are many factors affecting the case fatality rate, not only subject to objective conditions such as medical resources and medical strength, but also the age, physical condition, and degree of infection of patients are also very important influencing factors.
According to the previous analysis of death cases by the National Health Commission, the death patients are mainly of advanced age, more than 80% are over 60 years old, and more than 75% have more than one underlying disease.
Simply comparing the case fatality rate is not our original intention. What we hope is that more people will pay attention to these "nameless cities".
On February 4, the central government held a meeting of the leading group for responding to the pneumonia epidemic of the new coronavirus infection, pointing out that Hubei Province, especially Wuhan City, is still the top priority of the national epidemic prevention and control, and it is necessary to put people's life safety and physical health first, strive to improve the admission rate and cure rate, and reduce the infection rate and case fatality rate.
At present, the National Health Commission has established a one-to-one support relationship between 16 provinces and cities outside Wuhan. "One province and one city", victory will certainly not be far away.
Daily economic news