By Liu Shenglan & She Yu, Research Department of Social Development, DRC

Research Report, No. 113, 2020 (Total 5857) 2020-5-18

Abstract: With the improvement in the control and prevention of COVID-19 epidemic, the entire nation will embrace the resumption of classes in May, which will, however, impose major pressure and challenges to the epidemic control and prevention efforts of schools. With the aim to enhance the professional management of the epidemic in school, various localities have conducted some primary explorations in terms of the coordination between schools and medical institutions. The major models include: 1. Medical institutions offer guidance and render services on the basis of pairing cooperation between medical institutions and schools; 2. Medical institutions send professionals to schools to conduct medical services. While in the meantime, there are also some problems to be addressed in the course of cooperation between schools and medical institutions, such as the personnel shortage of medical institutions especially that of big hospitals, excessive heavy workload, the imperfect incentive mechanism and the inadequate medical guidance and evaluation mechanisms. In light of these problems, this paper offers the following policy options: 1. Tailored mechanisms for the cooperation between medical institutions and schools needs to be established and enhanced so as to ensure that schools could resume classes in a safe and orderly manner. 2. Relevant policies and regulations needs to be refined and the cultivation of skilled personnel need to be strengthened to improve their service capability. In addition, the division of responsibilities needs to be made clear and an incentive mechanism needs to be established. The role of modern information technology needs to be brought into full play to ensure the effect of the cooperation between medical institutions and schools. Explorations need to be made in terms of regular cooperation between medical institutions and schools so as to better contain the epidemic.

Keywords: cooperation between medical institutions and schools, class resumption, epidemic, policy options