Makeshift hospitals are under construction in Gaoxin South district, Jilin City, Northeast China's Jilin Province on March 14, 2022, under snow. Jilin Province has been hit hard by the recent Omicron outbreak. Photo: VCG

 
The epidemic prevention in Northeast China's Jilin Province is at its toughest moments and the local government must curb the viral spread resolutely and realize the dynamic-zero target as soon as possible, Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said during her visit to the province on Tuesday, which has seen a record high of over 8,000 cases in half a month. Antigen tests should be properly used to map out the infections, she noted. 

Loopholes and problems in the epidemic prevention work must be fixed with decisive measures, and organization capability should be strengthened for a more efficient and accurate COVID-19 screening. Apart from nucleic acid test, antigen test should also be used to identify and separate the infected people. 

Jilin should seek to deploy available rooms in hotels, schools, and public rental houses and prepare adequate isolation rooms and sufficient beds, so that all close contacts can be quarantined and transmission chain could be thoroughly cut off, Sun noted. 

Meanwhile, the province must coordinate current medical resources including designated hospitals and makeshift hospitals to classify and treat the infected patients, and take multiple measures to improve the effectiveness of treatment, Sun added. Other basic medical needs of the public should also be taken good care of. 

Sun particularly mentioned the targeted epidemic prevention in schools, noting a strict closed-loop management should be implemented, with disinfection, environment monitoring, and nucleic acid testing in place to ensure the absolute safety on school campuses. 

Jilin published a manual for the antigen self-tests on Tuesday, which specified that people under home or centralized quarantine should take the tests by themselves every day in the first five days of their isolation, along with regular nucleic acid testing. 

Residents can also buy the self-test kits online or from local pharmacies. Those with positive results must immediately report it to epidemic management personnel and they will be transferred to fever clinics at designated medical institutions for further diagnosis with nucleic acid tests.  

The province announced on Monday that it had acquired 12 million antigen testing kits.

Tuesday registered a total of 1,860 confirmed cases and 1,194 silent carriers nationwide. Among them, 1,853 infections were reported in Jilin Province.

Global Times