Health body to reward exemplary medics working on the frontline

The National Health Commission, together with another two central government bodies, will reward a batch of medical workers that perform well on the frontline of the battle against the novel coronavirus as it takes a series of measures to ensure that they have enough rest and work in high spirit, officials with the commission said.

The initiative to reward both medical workers and teams with good performance has been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Ma Xiaowei, head of the commission, told a news conference on Friday.

Those in "posts with high risk at the grassroots level" will be given priority in the reward. They will be rewarded on the frontline while the fight continues instead of rewarding them after the battle, he noted.

He also said more rewards will be given to motive medical workers to keep "high combat effectiveness and strong fighting spirit" and to continue their fight energetically and healthily.

Over 40,000 medical workers have been dispatched to Hubei province, the center of the epidemic outbreak, according to the commission.

Aside from boosting salary and subsidies as required by the central government, the commission has taken many other measures to strengthen support and protection of staff members, said Jiao Yahui, deputy head of the commission's medical administration bureau.

The commission has assigned 300 psychologists to offer psychological counseling for these medics while rolling out measures to ensure enough rests for them, she said.

As some medical teams are seeing the number of patients in critical conditions decrease, the commission has arranged some of the medics in these teams to help with teams still overburdened by their work, she said.

She also said some of the medical teams that arrived in Hubei as early as January have been replaced by other teams so that those that have worked for an extended period of time could have rest.

As more medical teams arrive, instead of working in their original teams, some medics are dispatched to relieve burden of teams that are already working, she added.

With replenishment of medical workers, physicians in medical teams from Gansu province, for example, now can rest for one to one and a half days and their nurses can have a break of two and a half days to three days after they work for one day, she said.

The measures that have been taken would guarantee that "our medical workers are always maintaining high combat effectiveness and are devoted to the battle against the epidemic energetically," she said.