exclusive interview with wang quanyi, director of beijing center for disease control: to prepare for the next pandemic, we need to build a more sensitive prevention and control system
2024-09-20
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
mycoplasma, monkeypox, dengue fever, "man-eating bacteria"... after the covid-19 pandemic, infectious diseases have not withdrawn from people's lives and vision, but people's attention and response to diseases have become more sensitive.
if the next pandemic is bound to come, what kind of infectious diseases should we focus on? how should the urban prevention and control system be constructed and updated?
at the global health beijing forum of this year's ciftis, beijing, tianjin and hebei signed a cooperation agreement on the prevention and control of major respiratory infectious diseases, and the relevant member units of the beijing major respiratory infectious disease research center were awarded plaques. the beijing news reporter interviewed wang quanyi, director of the beijing center for disease control and prevention, to discuss how megacities should respond to the next pandemic.
wang quanyi said that we need to "build a wall" before the pandemic arrives, improve our capabilities and make preparations in all aspects to create a more sensitive prevention and control system. network data will also be included in the monitoring of new and emerging infectious diseases to facilitate the social perception system.
wang quanyi, director of beijing center for disease control and prevention. photo provided by the interviewee
what will be the next pandemic? it's hard to predict
beijing news:the new coronavirus is not far away, and monkeypox, dengue fever, "man-eating bacteria" and other diseases have made a comeback. what do you think of this phenomenon?
wang quanyi:compared with the new coronavirus, these infectious diseases are not completely unfamiliar diseases, but with changes in the environment and mutations of pathogens, they have caused new epidemics or spread to new areas. they can also be professionally called emerging infectious diseases.
these infectious diseases have different transmission characteristics and causes. monkeypox can be transmitted through contact and sexual transmission. in the past, it was mainly transmitted from animals to humans. in recent years, it has been continuously transmitted between humans and has also crossed africa to cause a global epidemic. dengue fever, as a mosquito-borne disease, has changed its prevalence area, which is related to global warming. in recent years, some professionals have paid attention to the fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and its scope is also changing. "man-eating bacteria" has caused more cases in japan, which may be related to mutations.
beijing news:will the next pandemic occur among known infectious diseases?
wang quanyi:it is difficult for humans to predict in advance which pathogen will cause the next pandemic. the only thing that is clear is that we must "build a wall" before the pandemic arrives, improve our capabilities and make preparations in all aspects, and build a more sensitive prevention and control system so that we can respond quickly when an epidemic occurs.
beijing news:when discussing the next pandemic, respiratory diseases seem to be mentioned the most. what considerations does beijing have in this regard?
wang quanyi:compared with other infectious diseases, respiratory infectious diseases spread faster, are more easily transmitted, are more difficult to prevent and control, and have a higher risk of causing a pandemic, so the industry pays special attention to it.
for example, although monkeypox sounded the global alarm this year, we are actually not particularly worried because monkeypox is a natural epidemic disease. although it may spill over into human society for some reasons, its basic reproduction index is low and the number of people affected is limited. in contrast, once new influenza viruses and coronaviruses appear, they may spread rapidly in a short period of time. we must pay special attention to and closely monitor them.
beijing center for disease control and prevention is constantly planning the research and prevention of respiratory diseases. last year, we established the beijing major respiratory infectious disease research center to carry out core technology research on rapid diagnostic technology, endogenous transmission patterns, key biological characteristics, etc. we held professional seminars and invited experts from various related fields to exchange and discuss important topics. this year, we signed a cooperation agreement with tianjin and hebei center for disease control and prevention, hoping to deepen the cooperation mechanism of joint prevention and control. we will do more work on respiratory infectious diseases in the future.
build a more comprehensive and sensitive prevention and control system
beijing news:you mentioned the need to "build a wall" and create a more sensitive prevention and control system. what will it look like? how will it differ from the existing prevention and control system?
wang quanyi:the world health organization has given advice on responding to emerging infectious diseases, mainly focusing on improving detection technology and developing vaccines and drugs. we hope to establish a more comprehensive system that integrates professional resources from all parties to better prevent and control super-large international cities like beijing, and also serve as a model for other cities.
this system should include four parts.
first, there is a monitoring system for emerging infectious diseases, which should extend to urban sewage, animals, network data and other aspects; second, there is the technology for detecting and identifying emerging infectious diseases, which should promptly clarify the genetic information of pathogens and be able to identify pathogens; then there is a prediction and early warning model for emerging infectious diseases, including the ability to analyze the development trend of the epidemic, interpret the evolution of pathogens, and develop drugs for the treatment of severe diseases; finally, there is the construction of an indicator system for risk assessment, which integrates information from various dimensions such as pathogen characteristics, transmission trends, and severe disease risks to enhance the city's risk assessment and prevention and control capabilities.
on september 10, the prevention and control of dengue fever was carried out in gucunping village, taipingxi town, yiling district, yichang city, hubei province. the picture shows the staff carrying out disinfection. photo/visual china
incorporating internet data into emerging infectious disease surveillance
beijing news:the new monitoring system includes network data. what specific content will it cover? how can this type of information play a role in the professional field of infectious disease prevention and control?
wang quanyi:our use of network data can be roughly divided into two parts.
first of all, as a center for international exchanges, beijing has close contacts with all walks of life and is only separated from foreign countries by "a cabin door". this is especially true in terms of public health. we must do a good job in preventing imported cases and need to pay considerable attention to the global epidemic situation.
for emerging infectious diseases with potential pandemic risks around the world, we hope to study and establish a global emerging infectious disease intelligent detection system, automatically integrate emerging infectious disease related data from multiple dimensions and sources such as the world health organization, national health departments, scientific research institutions and social media, comprehensively integrate infectious disease epidemic information, population mobility data, geospatial information, meteorological conditions, socioeconomic conditions and social media public opinion and other multi-channel data, build a comprehensive coverage, real-time updated data monitoring and analysis platform, and intelligently detect emerging infectious diseases around the world. the data here are both private and professional.
during the epidemic, people's online search behavior has a certain degree of forerunner. for example, during the covid-19 period, there were many cases of fever and cough in a region. before going to the fever clinic for treatment and entering the monitoring scope of the medical system, would many people search for symptoms and medicines online first? our second use of network data is to collect clues of potential infectious disease outbreaks and abnormal health events from the internet, such as search engine index, internet medical consultation volume, online drug sales, and active detection data of multiple respiratory pathogens of community residents, etc., to facilitate the social perception system and assist in the monitoring and early warning of new emerging infectious diseases.
beijing news:beijing arranged for the monitoring of covid-19 in urban sewage in february last year. at that time, it was mentioned that this was the first time the disease control system had been involved in this field. what is the role of sewage monitoring? how large will the scope of monitoring be in the future?
wang quanyi:there are many clues to infectious diseases hidden in urban sewage. during the epidemic, we will collect pathogen specimens through throat swabs to obtain individual and regional positive conditions, pathogen genetic information, etc. pathogens or pathogen gene fragments will actually continue to be discharged from the infected body into the city's sewage system. therefore, by monitoring urban sewage, professional institutions can obtain a lot of disease information.
through key indicators such as population size, pathogen rna degradation, and sewage virus concentration, we can establish a real-time early warning algorithm for emerging infectious diseases, or build a virus shedding dynamics model and a population transmission neural network model to establish technical reserves for infectious disease epidemic scale assessment and precise policy implementation.
the scope of sewage monitoring can be combined with population mobility, key populations, and key places. based on the distribution of sewage treatment plant pipelines, main lines, secondary lines, and sensitive points can be laid out to establish a sewage monitoring network in the main urban area with good representativeness and population coverage. for overseas epidemics, we can explore the establishment of a sewage pathogen monitoring network system for inbound aircraft, focusing on monitoring new and emerging infectious diseases with potential pandemic risks for the world.
beijing news reporter dai xuan
editor zhang lei proofreader zhang yanjun
