China's new Covid-19 control protocol calls for monitoring mutated variants: Report

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China's State Council joint prevention and control mechanism against COVID-19 has released a virus prevention and control plan.

The new protocol has been released in accordance to the decision to downgrade the epidemic management from Class A to Class B. The new protocol stresses upon increasing inoculation of the vaccine, self protection against the virus and on monitoring the virus via China's national influenza surveillance network according to a report by the Global Times. Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

Here's all that you need to know about the new Covid protocol:

More Hospitals
Citing the national influenza surveillance network the report said that 554 national influenza surveillance sentinel hospitals are required to conduct surveillance for influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) surveillance.

Genome Sequencing
The new protocol urges upon collection of samples from outpatient and emergency cases, severe cases, and deaths in sentinel hospitals in representative sea ports to conduct whole-genome sequencing.

The national influenza surveillance network recommended that the results need to be reported to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Institute of Virology.

Increased Monitoring, Increased Reporting
The new plan also requires regions to select qualified cities to conduct
monitoring of COVID-19 in urban sewage, which could help assess the intensity of the epidemic and get aware of the changing trend and virus mutation.

To ensure that the cases are curbed, the new protocol recommends that  new Covid-19 cases should be reported within 24 hours to China's CDC.

Increased InoculationThe new version of the protocol also calls for boosting vaccination, particularly among the elderly.