Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research

Date Submitted: Apr 23, 2020
Date Accepted: Aug 11, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 13, 2020

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Information Disclosure During the COVID-19 Epidemic in China: City-Level Observational Study

Hu G, Li P, Yuan C, Tao C, Wen H, Liu Q, Qiu W

Information Disclosure During the COVID-19 Epidemic in China: City-Level Observational Study

J Med Internet Res 2020;22(8):e19572

DOI: 10.2196/19572

PMID: 32790640

PMCID: 7473703

Information disclosure during the COVID-19 epidemic in China: A city-level observational study

  • Guangyu Hu; 
  • Peiyi Li; 
  • Changzheng Yuan; 
  • Chenglin Tao; 
  • Hai Wen; 
  • Qiannan Liu; 
  • Wuqi Qiu

ABSTRACT

Background:

Information disclosure is a top priority for official responses to the 2019 coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). The timely and standardized information published by the authorities as a response to the crisis can make the public better informed and prepared for the pandemic; however, there is limited evidence of any systematic analyses of the disclosed epidemic information. This in turn has important implications for risk communication.

Objective:

This study aimed to describe and compare the officially released content regarding the local epidemic situations and analyze the characteristics of information disclosure through local transmission in major cities of China.

Methods:

The 31 capital cities in mainland China were included in a city-level observational study. Data were retrieved from local municipalities and health commission websites as of March 18, 2020. A checklist was employed as a rapid qualitative assessment tool to analyze the information disclosure performance of each city. Descriptive analyses and data visualizations were produced to present and compare the comparative performances of the cities.

Results:

In total, 29 cities (93.5%) established specific COVID-19 webpages to disclose information. Among them, 12 of the city webpages were added to their corresponding municipal websites. A majority of the cities (21 of 31, 67.7%) published their first cases of infection in a timely manner on the actual day of confirmation. Regarding the information disclosures highlighted on the websites, news updates from local media or press briefings were the most prevalent (28 of 29, 96.6%), followed by epidemic surveillance (25 of 29, 86.2%) and advice for the public (25 of 29, 86.2%). Clarifications of misinformation and frequently asked questions were largely overlooked as only 2 cities provided this valuable information. The median daily update frequency of epidemic surveillance summaries was 1.2 times per day (interquartile range 1.0 to 1.3 times), and the majority of these summaries (18 of 25, 72.0%) also provided detailed information of confirmed cases. The reporting of key indicators in the epidemic surveillance summaries, as well as critical facts included in the confirmed case reports, varied substantially between cities. In general, the best performance in terms of timely reporting and the transparency of information disclosures were observed in the municipalities directly administered by the central government compared to the other cities.

Conclusions:

Timely and effective efforts to disclose information related to the COVID-19 epidemic have been made in major cities of China. Continued improvements to local authority reporting will contribute to more effective public communication and efficient public health research responses. The development of protocols and the standardization of epidemic message templates—as well as the use of uniform operating procedures to provide regular information updates—should be prioritized to ensure a coordinated national response.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Hu G, Li P, Yuan C, Tao C, Wen H, Liu Q, Qiu W

Information Disclosure During the COVID-19 Epidemic in China: City-Level Observational Study

J Med Internet Res 2020;22(8):e19572

DOI: 10.2196/19572

PMID: 32790640

PMCID: 7473703

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.