https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-020-03435-6/index.html
Li Lanjuan: Lockdown architectThis epidemiologist advised shutting down Wuhan to control the earliest COVID-19 outbreak.
On 18 January, China’s highest administrative body sent Li Lanjuan and other experts to Wuhan to size up its viral outbreak. A few days later, the 73-year-old epidemiologist at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou called for Wuhan — population 11 million — to be locked down immediately. “If the infection continues to spread, other provinces will also lose control, like Wuhan. China’s economy and society will suffer seriously,” she said in a 22 January interview on Chinese state television. Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert at China’s Guangzhou Medical University, who led the team in Wuhan, had already announced that the virus could spread between people. The warnings from Li and Zhong helped to prompt decisive action. On 23 January, all transport was blocked in and out of Wuhan, and people were ordered to stay at home. Travel plans for Chinese New Year, which began on 25 January, were cancelled. At the time, the lockdown struck many as an over-reaction; it lasted for 76 days and was aggressively enforced. Some residents were unable to get medical care, and complained they had been left to die. But the plan worked. “It clearly led to excellent epidemic control within China and aversion of a far more catastrophic epidemic in the country,” says epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Modellers estimated that it delayed the epidemic’s spread through China by 3–5 days, giving other regions time to prepare. And the number of exported cases dropped by 80% for a few weeks. Locking down a city of 11 million people to stop infections escaping was unique, says Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong. “I don’t think there are precedents for this.” Li stayed in Wuhan to help care for people with COVID-19, and became a state-endorsed symbol of selfless doctors in the crisis. She was often pictured in her medical garb, and referred to as “Grandma Li” on social media. Chinese media recounted how Li was born into a poor family in Zhejiang and became one of the nation’s ‘barefoot doctors’, who helped implement basic disease prevention measures and treat illnesses. She was recruited to the provincial medical university and later specialized in hepatitis. In 2003, as director of Zhejiang’s health department, she ordered the quarantining of thousands of contacts of people who had contracted severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS): a controversial decision later seen as key to containing the virus.
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发表于 2020-12-16 22:01:05
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