Hospital response to the COVID-19 outbreak: the experience in Shanghai, China

On 20th January 2020, the first COVID-19 case was reported in Shanghai, China. As of 12th March 2020, 344 cases with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection have been detected in Shanghai, of which three died, 321 patients are discharged, 20 patients still receive ongoing treatments (Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, 2020). All confirmed patients with COVID-19 were centralised in Shanghai Public Health Medical Centre to receive standardised treatments. Shanghai is an international metropolis with more than 27 million residents, of which 9.7 million are commuting population. It has been a challenge for Shanghai to control the COVID-19 outbreak among the high density and high mobility population. On 21st January 2020, Shanghai Municipal Health Commission set up fever clinics in 110 hospitals as frontlines services to screen suspected patients. The hospitals went into a ‘state of alert’ and adopted strategies to cope with the COVID-19 outbreak (Wang, et al., 2020; Cohen and Normile, 2020).