China issues regulations on infectious disease outbreak early warning

BEIJING -- China has issued a trial set of regulations for managing infectious disease outbreak early warnings, aiming to standardize and guide related work, guard against public health risks, and protect people's lives and health.

Consisting of four sections with 19 articles, the trial rules, released by the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration, outline key components such as the scope and definitions, key procedures and operating mechanisms, and safeguard regulations.

The regulations mandate early warnings for public health threats arising from notifiable diseases, emerging infectious diseases, illnesses of unknown cause, and other high-risk infections.

Such risks require alerting potentially affected populations, and relevant departments and institutions should take precautionary measures in advance, per the regulations.

The rules also require disease control institutions at all levels to collect surveillance data, conduct risk assessments, identify possible public health threats, and determine epidemic risk levels, which should be classified into four tiers.

Detailed standards for risk classification will be formulated separately.