Risk assessment of public health emergency and concerned infectious diseases in China, January 2014

Objective To assess the risk of public health emergency and communicable diseases concerned in the mainland of China in January 2014. Methods Semi-structured interviews and discussions among subject matter experts based on surveillance data and public institute bulletins, et al. And 24 provincial level CDCs attended the conference through video. Results According to the surveillance data of infectious disease and public health emergency, the occurrence of public health emergency events in January will be getting down. As the temperature is getting lower, the risk of non-occupational carbon monoxide poisoning is still high. The respiratory diseases, such as the varicella, influenza and mumps, takes the most part of the infectious diseases. The activity of influenza virus in northern and southern China continues to be robust. The outpatient visit due to influenza like illness(ILI) and positive rate of influenza virus will be getting higher. The risk of human infection of H7N9 virus in mainland on the following months, especially around the Spring Festival, may increase if the mode of poultry breeding, circulation, trade and human-poultry contact didn't change fundamentally. With the approaching of Spring Festival, the risk of reporting imported MERS cases is increasing as the returning migrant workers coming back to their hometowns, but the risk of outbreak is still low. We need to strengthen surveillance and preparedness for infectious diarrhea disease events which usually happened in school and nursery school. With the growing of personnel flow and community meals, as well as some of countries and China reported several infectious diseases recently, the risk of respiratory diseases and food poisoning disease is high. Conclusion It is expected that the national public health emergencies and epidemic situation of infectious diseases in January 2014 would be similar as the January before, namely at a lower level. We need to strengthen the surveillance and preparedness for A(H7N9) viruses, influenza virus and MERS.