Li, G, & Xu, H.D. (2023). Strategies for Combating the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Assessment of Public Health Measures in China during the Outbreak. Occasional Paper Series, 5 (2): 1-7, December 2023, The American Society for Public Administration.
Abstract: With the COVID-19 pandemic in the rearview mirror, the research reviews the public health interventions during the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 taken by the Chinese government and discusses the unique institutional and political contexts of adopting and implementing such public health emergency measures and their unintended consequences. Specifically, the study collected a vast amount of data relating to the public health interventions in China, breaks down the critical period of the disease outbreak into five phases — Incubation Period, Outbreak Period, Mitigation, Post-Mitigation Period, and Routinized Management and Control Period, and analyzes how different sets of public health measures were deployed and removed in City of Wuhan, Hubei Province, and the rest of China at large, based on the changes in the pandemic conditions. This empirical study represents one of the most comprehensive analyses of the emergency management strategies in China for the COVID-19 pandemic and serves a key reference for future public health emergency management.