City acts to guarantee medical services and stabilize employment
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Time estimated: 12 min
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Neighborhood health centers
The city's neighborhood health centers have shouldered care for half the number of people with fevers, reducing the pressure on leading public hospitals, the Shanghai Health Commission said.
The grassroots facilities admitted 40,338 fever patients on December 23, accounting for 50.2 percent of the city's total, the latest data showed. The number of patients in city-level hospitals' fever clinics dropped from 58 percent to 18.7 percent of the city's service amount.
A patient at the fever clinic of Laoximen Community Health Service Center in Huangpu District.
Shanghai opened 2,594 fever service rooms in all neighborhood health centers, sub-centers, service stations and village clinics from December 19.
The measure has taken effect quickly. The service quantity of fever patients in the neighborhood rose from the previous 5 percent of the city's total to half within four days. This has met patients' demands for health services and drug prescriptions, reducing the pressure on leading hospitals.
To better serve patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, the grassroots facilities have expanded services and prolonged opening hours.
All fever clinics at the neighborhood level offer services several days a week. Minhang District was the first to launch emergency service at fever clinics at night. All the 14 neighborhood health centers in Minhang prolong their fever service to the midnight from Monday to Friday and 10pm on Saturday and Sunday.
An elderly man seeks treatment at the fever clinic of Hongqiao Community Health Service Center in Changning district.
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Ambulance services
All the city's ambulances and hospital emergency departments are running at full speed, dealing with the rising number of patients due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to health authorities.
The Shanghai Medical Emergency Center and nine rural emergency centers now have 1,251 ambulances with 4,046 staff operating. The calls for ambulances has kept rising in recent days.
The "120" call center received 51,852 requests for ambulances on December 23, 4.7 percent more than the previous day. The city dispatched 5,101 ambulance services on December 23, 2.2 percent higher than the previous day and 33.5 percent higher than the previous week. About 70 percent of staff remain on the job, despite the strong workload pressure.
Tongren Hospital and Putuo District Central Hospital are the two district-level hospitals receiving the largest number of ambulances.
"The past 24 hours from Friday midnight to Saturday midnight, our hospital received 97 ambulances," said Ma Jun, president of Tongren Hospital on Sunday.
To improve efficiency, the hospital has streamlined its process by completing patient classification at the door of the emergency department. While one ambulance arrives, doctors and nurses are waiting at the door to separate patients into areas such as serious and critical in line with their condition and carry out treatment.
Medical staff wearing protective gear send a patient to the emergency room of a hospital in Shanghai.
Patients enter Tongren Hospital in Changning District. Negitive PCR test results are no longer required to enter outpatients and emergency departments at all medical institutions in Shanghai starting from December 20.
To deal with the staff shortage and support the emergency frontline, Shanghai Health Commission has dispatched hundreds of doctors to support the medical emergency centers and better arrange the medical resources to increase ambulance efficiency.
Those with short of breath, high fever for three days after medication or quick heart beat, pregnant women with problems like nausea and headache should call 120 for ambulance. Ambulance dispatchers will send an ambulance to people with serious patients by priority.
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Employment ensured
Shanghai has issued measures to stabilize employment and retain workers in an orderly manner, to guarantee normal production and life amid the current labor shortage in some industries.
The city clarified that enterprises should bear the main responsibility to secure jobs and stabilize production, seeing it as a top priority to ensure normal operation.
Couriers need to deliver more online goods at a time due to the pandemic and major delivery services companies in Shanghai are facing manpower shortages.
The city encourages enterprises to develop and implement staff care and incentive measures, especially to deliver care to frontline personnel.
For instance, it suggests e-commerce platforms as well as postal and express companies increase commissions, set up rewards, provide couriers and take-away deliverers with necessary food and beverages, and issue warm work clothes and supplies. Construction firms, meanwhile, are encouraged to reasonably increase the income of construction workers.
Shanghai is also to solidly carry out special actions to rectify the problem of migrant workers' wages default, and further increase the efforts to investigate and combat malicious non-payment of wages.
It is reiterated that enterprises must pay overtime wages to those working during the Spring Festival in accordance with the law.
To motivate e-commerce platforms and postal and courier enterprises to keep on providing services, from December 25, 2022, to January 27, 2023 (hereinafter referred to as the "subsidy period"), subsidiaries of 60 yuan (US$8.6) per day for each person will be given to the frontline staff of the key monitored e-commerce platforms and postal courier enterprises.
Especially for the New Year's Day holiday (from December 31, 2022, to January 2, 2023) and the Spring Festival holiday (from January 21 to January 27, 2023), each frontline employee who works during the two holiday periods will be given a subsidy of 150 yuan per day.
The city also encourages key construction projects not to suspend construction if possible. During the subsidy period, a daily subsidy of 100 yuan per person will be given to the frontline staff of key construction projects, if the project sees the actual number of workers on duty on that day reaching more than 80 percent of the figure at the end of November 2022.
Subsidy funds will be covered by finance of both the municipal and the district level.
The city encourages migrant workers to return to work sooner after the holidays, with better services for their return trips and traffic subsidies.
During the period from January 28 to February 5, 2023, enterprises that rent buses to organize migrant workers to return to work across provinces will be subsidized at 50 percent of the actual rental cost. The maximum amount for each enterprise is 300,000 yuan.
Migrant workers are also encouraged to stay in Shanghai for the Spring Festival, with various activities staged. Cultural and tourism activities, as an example, will be carried out, with the city's cultural and tourism enterprises giving out free movie tickets and tickets to scenic spots for the migrant workers who stay in Shanghai during the holiday.
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Photo: Ti Gong, IC, CFP