On January 18, 100-year-old Huang Zhenxiang was discharged from the TCM Hospital in Shuyang County, Suqian City after nearly 20 days of treatment.
As the epidemic situation has improved, the number of people seeking treatment at fever clinics in Jiangsu's 13 major cities has declined clearly since late December, reaching 36,000 on January 12.
The emergency department at hospitals also saw the number of patients drop to half from the peak daily figure.
Chen Xufeng, director of the emergency medicine center of Jiangsu Province Hospital, said the center received more than 1,600 patients per day in the peak period and the number of critical COVID-19 cases was also 6-7 times higher than the usual level. Now the number of patients has showed an overall downward trend, at about 500-600 per day, and some elderly patients have also been discharged.
Ren Tiancheng, director of the emergency department of Nanjing Jiangning Hospital, said the hospital is expected to resume normal medical services after the Spring Festival holiday.
Nanjing Emergency Center reported it currently dispatches about 500-600 ambulances per day, roughly the same as before the peak period.
In the fight against the outbreak, the province's health commission ensured the supply of key medical resources, expanded the service capacity, boosted the support to rural areas, and also optimized the patient treatment and transfer measures.
It sent six task forces to supervise the COVID-19 response, and promoted cooperation of experts and consultations. Led by Qiu Haibo, vice president of Southeast University, a total of 400 experts from 20 specialties such as respiratory, critical care, Chinese medicine and infection formed treatment teams, who then tailored treatment solutions for each patient and also pooled resources to treat critical cases.
Traditional Chinese medicine has also played an active role in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infections. Jiangsu has introduced 37 preventive TCM prescriptions, 55 treatment prescriptions and 21 rehabilitation prescriptions, which are widely used in 2,749 medical institutions. Since late December, more than 2.36 million patients have used 9.25 million such prescriptions.
