COVID-19: Why is medical system in metropolises so vulnerable?

From global failure to global fight

Infectious diseases used to be the biggest killer of human beings. For example, the outbreak of Black Death in Sicily in 1347 caused 25 million deaths in Europe over 20 years. The outbreak of Spanish Flu in 1918 killed 25 million to 40 million people worldwide.

With the development and popularization of antibacterial drugs and vaccines over the past hundred years, most of the infectious diseases that once did extreme harm to human health and life, such as smallpox, polio, measles, rubella, mumps, tetanus, pertussis, and diphtheria, are now eliminated or brought under control. The number of deaths from infectious diseases such as pneumonia, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and influenza has decreased dramatically in developed countries since the 1950s, and chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, hypertension, and diabetes have become the main causes of death.

The success in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases has helped to increase the average life expectancy of human beings, but the changes in the main causes of death have prompted the focus of medical systems around the world, particularly in developed countries, to shift from infectious diseases to chronic ones. As a result, countries are now investing too little in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, and existing medical resources are mainly concentrated on dealing with chronic diseases.

From the perspective of existing medical resources, neither the medical personnel in terms of professional background, nor the equipment, nor even the entire medical system can respond to the outbreaks in a timely and effective manner. Therefore, even metropolises with rich medical resources, such as Wuhan, New York, and Tokyo, were caught off guard and paid a heavy price in their confront with COVID-19.

Bill Gates warned the world as early as 2015 that too little investment in infectious diseases caused by viruses would lead to global failure. The scourge of COVID-19 unfortunately confirmed his prediction.

(1) Domestic and international aid

To address the shortage of medical workers and massive job cuts in Wuhan, China relies on its strong mobilization ability to send many medical workers across the country to aid Wuhan. The total number of medical workers sent to Wuhan reached 42,000, which largely alleviated Wuhan's medical stress.

A country's ability to aid epidemic-hit area is critical to the fight against COVID-19, but not every country has the ability. As evidenced in New York and Tokyo, even developed countries boasting rich medical resources cannot swiftly mobilize enough medical workers to aid the area hit by the epidemic.

What is more worrying is those developing countries suffering from the shortage of medical resources. Not to mention Africa, Indian and Indonesia in Asia, for example, have only 0.8 physicians and 0.3 physicians per 1,000 people, respectively, with 0.5 beds and 1 bed per 1,000 people, respectively. In those countries with scarce medical resources and poor national rescue capacity, hospitals will be overstretched during the outbreak, which may leading to a sever disaster. Therefore, how to organize the global rescue force is imminent. The problem is that most of the developed countries themselves are now busy responding to the pandemic, paying little heed to others. China's medical assistance to other countries is particularly valuable at this moment.

(2) Explosive scientific progress

Measures taken by countries, such as declaring a nationwide emergency state, closing borders, city lockdown, home quarantine, and social distancing, are aimed to substantially reduce or avoid people-to-people exchanges, and block the spread of the virus. Although those measures have taken effect, they cannot completely wipe out the virus. Therefore, even if the pandemic is contained temporarily, the victory we have won is very fragile, and the virus will come back any time.

To secure the victory, we have to rely on the development of science and technology. Since the outbreak, the US has upgraded six generations of COVID-19 test kits in 12 days, as test time has been shortened from two days to one day, then to six hours, then to 3.5 hours, then to 1.5 hours, and then to five minutes, with an accuracy rate above 95%. Cheap, rapid and accurate testing methods will make large-scale screening possible.

Convenient and simple COVID-19 antibody tests have been available in the US, so the US government is mulling over the implementation of COVID-19 antibody tests for its entire population. At the same time, the development of wonder drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 is gearing up around the world.

The pandemic is stimulating the explosive progress of related science and technology. Only when we master the three magic weapons -- detection, wonder drugs and vaccines, can we truly control and defeat the coronavirus.

Crisis is also a turning point. Each global war and crisis in modern times brought opportunities and an explosive technological revolution. World War II, for instance, promoted the development of the aviation industry, and opened the door of the nuclear industry. World War II not only gave birth to the development of the aerospace technology, but also laid the foundation for the web technology.

The urgency of the pandemic will not only accelerate technological progress, but also expand the technological path, making unnoticed technological paths stand out. For example, Traditional Chinese Medicine is gaining global attention because of its role in the fight against COVID-19, which may possibly provide a valuable opportunity for TCM to go global.

Ozone is also a technology path that has been ignored due to prejudice. I called for attention to the disinfection efficacy of ozone in an article published on Feb. 18, and advocated the use of ozone in containing COVID-10. Experiments conducted in Japan have proved that the possibility of virus transmission through droplets in a closed environment is 18.7 times higher than that in an unclosed environment. Therefore, an important strategy of the Japanese government to deal with COVID-19 is to call on its people to avoid the confined environment, crowding and close contact. If a breakthrough can be made in the research and development of ozone sensors to control the concentration of ozone as cheaply and freely as we can control the temperature, we are hopeful to solve the problem of virus infection in indoor space and liberate people from the fear of communication by using ozone to sterilize and kill viruses in the presence of people.

The global fight against the pandemic is bound to trigger a huge leap in science and technology, and push for industrial upgrade.

(3) Globalization will not end

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, all nations around the world have being cutting off people-to-people exchanges, and put cities on lockdown, thus putting a halt to globalization. Worries about the future of globalization, doubts about large-city-oriented urbanization and even negative voices are never endless.

Indeed, global people-to-people exchanges expand rapidly as globalization is taking hold, with international trips increased from 400 million 30 years ago to 1.4 billion in 2018.

Under the background of globalization, large-city-oriented urbanization is unfolding worldwide. From 1980 to 2019, 117 cities saw their net population increase more than 2.5 million. During this period, the total net population increase of these cities was up to 630 million. It is particularly noteworthy that the number of megacities with a population of more than 10 million increased from five in 1980 to 33. Moreover, most of these megacities are the centers of international exchanges, and the metropolises that lead the world's political and economic development. Their total population is 570 million, accounting for 15.7% of the world's total population.

The highly dense aviation network and frequent people-to-people exchanges lead to the spread of COVID-19 around the world, leading to the pandemic. Many international metropolises with a large population and intensive international exchanges have become areas hard hit by the outbreak.

However, it must be clearly understood that the real reason for the global spread of the novel coronavirus is not the speed and density of international people-to-people exchanges, but the long-term negligence of human beings for the threat of infectious diseases.

In fact, the process of globalization has been accompanied by the threat of the spread of infectious diseases from the very beginning. From the age of great navigation to today, human beings have been playing games with infectious diseases, during which they have paid heavy costs. However, because of the big victory against infectious diseases after the Second World War, the developed countries and world organizations have tended to neglect the threat of infectious diseases for a long time.

The Global Risks Report 2020 released by the World Economic Forum, ranked 10 risks that may occur in the future 10 years, excluding the risk caused by infectious diseases. In a separate ranking, infectious diseases took the last place in the 10 risks that would affect the world most in the future 10 years.

Unfortunately, contrary to the prediction of the World Economy Forum, in the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a big blow to the human society as a whole in an unprecedented way.

At the same time, we are happy to see that the outbreak has pushed the world to pay attention to and invest in virus-infectious diseases, which will definitely lead to an explosive technological revolution and social revolution, and will eventually overcome the threat of viral infectious diseases to human beings, and move toward the global victory.

COVID-19 will not stop globalization and metropolitanization, but will give birth to better globalization and healthier cosmopolitans will emerge after the crisis.

Zhou Muzhi is a professor of Tokyo Keizai University and president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.