Coverage of incentive and disciplinary measures established by govern-ment and professional departments for promoting containment of major epidemics in the Chinese Mainland before and after COVID-19 epidemic: a documents-based comparison analysis

Abstract

ObjectiveTo analyze changes in the coverage of incentive measures for promoting major epidemic prevention and control in documents published by governmental and professional departments in the Chinese Mainland before and after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic of 2020.MethodsThrough systematically searching websites of government departments and professional institutions in 31 provincial-level administrative divisions (PLADs) of the mainland of China, we retrieved totally 3 864 documents (including laws, regulations, standards, rules, proposals, plans, and guidelines) relevant to major epidemic prevention and control published from 2000 through 2020. The paragraphs related to incentive and disciplinary measures for promoting the containment of major epidemic were extracted to calculate region- and institution-specific coverage of the measures in the retrieved documents. Wilcoxon paired rank sum test was adopted to evaluate differences in the coverage of the established measures before and after COVID-19 epidemic of 2020 among various economic regions and administrative/professional institutions. ResultsThe average coverage of disciplinary measures for the retrieved documents increased from 74.19% before 2020 to 76.34% in 2020, with a significant increase of 2.90% (P < 0.05); while, the average coverage incentive measures was 22.85% for the documents published in 2020, significantly increased in comparison with no incentive measure presented in all the documents published before 2020 (P < 0.001). Compared to those before 2020, the national average combined coverage of incentive and disciplinary measures increased significantly by 11.83%, 30.77%, 42.11%, and 89.66% in 2020, for the documents published by administrative departments, public health institutions, health care institutions, and primary health care institutions, respectively; the national average coverage increased from 37.10% before 2020 to 49.60% in 2020 for the documents published by all the institutions, with an increment of 33.70%; and for the documents published by all the institutions in the PLADs of eastern, central and western region, the coverage increased significantly by 47.47%, 27.54% and 25.00% (all P < 0.05). ConclusionAfter COVID-19 epidemic of 2020, the coverage of incentive and disciplinary measures for promoting major epidemic prevention and control increased significantly in the documents published by governmental and professional departments in the mainland of China and the increase was much higher for the coverage of incentive measures.

Keywords

• comparison before and after covid-19 epidemic
• major epidemic
• incentive mechanism
• the mainland of china