The National Health Commission issued new regulations to strengthen requirements for reporting information on newly emerging infectious diseases.

The National Health Commission recently issued the "Regulations on the Management of Infectious Disease Information Reporting", clarifying the responsibilities and tasks of institutions, and further strengthening the reporting requirements for newly emerging infectious diseases, outbreaks of infectious diseases with unknown causes, and other infectious diseases requiring special monitoring. Infectious disease information reporting is an important link in infectious disease monitoring and early warning. The regulations require responsible reporting units and individuals to report infectious diseases classified as Class A or Class B, such as pulmonary anthrax and infectious atypical pneumonia, as well as newly emerging infectious diseases, outbreaks of infectious diseases with unknown causes, or other infectious disease outbreaks within 2 hours through the infectious disease reporting network. The regulations also specify that medical institutions should implement a system where the first healthcare provider is responsible for reporting. When a first healthcare provider discovers infectious disease patients, suspected patients, or carriers of specific pathogens that need to be reported during the diagnosis and treatment process, they must generate electronic infectious disease reports in accordance with the requirements of the "Infectious Disease Report Card of the People's Republic of China" and report them through pre-installed software or other data collection methods. Furthermore, the regulations promote the deployment and application of pre-installed software for infectious disease monitoring and early warning in medical institutions, and utilize new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to improve the utilization of infectious disease data analysis.