The government plans to spend 5 billion yuan ($731.5 million) on virus prevention efforts. The Ministry of Health has officially added the A/H1N1 flu to the category of infectious diseases that warrant quarantine, while the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has set up several quarantine facilities to screen cargo and monitor the body temperatures of passengers who arrive from flu-stricken regions at international airports, railway stations and ports.

In another move, a number of designated hospitals across the country stand ready to accommodate and treat infected patients. They are well-prepared with technical equipment and materials such as protective clothing and masks, as well as contingency plans to cope with emergent cases. The country also has started accelerating the production of antiviral medicines such as Tamiflu, which have proven to be effective against the new flu.

Another key commitment of China in the fight for health is information transparency. The Central Government has required regular flu movement reports from involved ministries, local governments and medical agencies to facilitate control of the epidemic. The Ministry of Health has also improved flu information disclosure and is pressing ahead with flu prevention education for the public.

China will strengthen its communication with the WHO and other countries and put in place effective countermeasures in line with the latest developments of the epidemic, said Mao Qun'an, spokesman of the Ministry of Health, at a recent press conference."We stand poised to extend medical and technological assistance to other countries in need of help," Mao said.

Quick detection

Flu detection is the first step in treating it. The most common method of A/H1N1 flu identification requires collecting a sample from the patient and sending it to well-equipped laboratories for analysis. The whole process may take a few days, causing treatment delays. But on May 3, the Ministry of Agriculture said Chinese scientists had developed a new way to detect the presence of the flu that could shorten the identification process to no more than five hours.

The new RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) device turns the RNAs (ribonucleic acid) of a sample taken from a patient into cDNAs (complementary deoxyribonucleic acid), and then produces hundreds of thousands of cDNA copies, making a reading easier. The device will quickly indicate whether the sample carries the A/H1N1 virus by comparing its genetic sequence with that of the pandemic virus. The Chinese scientists obtained the A/H1N1 virus sequence from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The detector was jointly developed by several research institutions, including the China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center and the National Bird Flu Reference Laboratory. Mao said at the news conference that the new detection method will be used at 84 influenza surveillance network laboratories across the country. China would further enhance its scientific research to improve epidemic prevention and ensure public health security, he added.

Vaccine on the way

A reassuring fact about the A/H1N1 flu is that it is curable in most cases where good medical care is within reach. That helps explain why its mortality rate has been relatively low compared with SARS and the bird flu.

But it is believed that a more durable solution will be found with a vaccine. Because the human flu vaccine already in use has proved ineffective in producing antibodies that provide protection against the A/H1N1 virus, scientists around the globe, including the Chinese, have been racing against the clock to develop a new one. The WHO also is working with global vaccine manufacturers on the research.

On May 6, Canadian scientists announced that they had completed the genetic sequencing of the A/H1N1 virus. This is the world's first sequencing of the new strain and paves the way for further research. Health experts say the genetic sequencing will help determine how the virus came into being and how it spread around the world. Meanwhile, the findings also confirmed that no change has occurred in the genetic makeup of the virus.

But health experts say it may take five to six months for researchers to develop a vaccine and even longer before it goes into mass production, which may allow time for the flu to mutate. As a result, researchers must constantly keep a close watch over genetic changes in the virus and come up with new technologies to beef up vaccine production, they said.

China has the capacity and expertise to research and produce a new prophylactic vaccine in a short time to cover the entire population, said Li Gang, a medical health expert at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald. For example, the government could streamline the approval procedures for manufacturing the vaccine, he said.