Medical emergency response teams in China required to get ready within two hours after receiving deployment orders

China's national medical emergency response teams have been required to raise the minimum number of each team from 30 to 60, according to a release from China's National Health Commission (NHC) and other government bodies on Friday. Emergency response teams are also demanded to complete the preparations within two hours after receiving deployment orders.

According to the management rules jointly published by the NHC and two other departments, emergency response teams added two categories of the medical emergency response to major epidemics and emergency response to traditional Chinese medicine on the basis of the original four categories including emergency medical rescue, poisoning incidents, nuclear and radiation emergencies and acute infectious disease outbreaks.

Emergency response teams responsible for major epidemic response should be capable of conducting laboratory testing for more than 1,000 individuals and serving 200 outpatients per day. Teams should also have the capability to administer quarantine and transfer patients and conduct epidemiological investigations, according to the regulations.

According to the regulations, each national medical emergency response team should be composed of more than 30 healthcare professionals and medical emergency management workers as well as technical and logistic support members.

The regulations also stipulate that medical rescue teams must have the capacity to conduct 20 damage control surgeries, attend to 200 emergency patients and outpatients, and handle 20 observation beds per day.

This move was among the various measures Chinese government took after the country battled against COVID-19 over the past few years. At the end of last year, health officials said China's national emergency health response teams are capable of covering all provincial-level regions.

All provincial and 90 percent of disease control centers at city levels have nucleic acid detection and virus isolation capabilities, Wang Hesheng, a deputy head of the NHC and chief of the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration, said during a press conference.

Infectious diseases can now be reported within four hours in an online direct reporting system, he said. Previously, the average reporting period was five days.