Legacy of the SARS outbreak(2)

After SARS, the country also increased investment in building public health systems and medical workers were trained for such emergency responses.

The emergency response system has been put to the test repeatedly over the past decade, particularly during the influenza A H1N1 in 2009 and bird flu pandemic.

Almost immediately after the world's first A H1N1 case was diagnosed in Mexico on April 25, 2009, China announced information about the new strain of flu virus and issued regular updates on cases in China. Strict quarantine measures were taken at boarder inspection sites. The first vaccine for A H1N1 was even produced in China. By December that year, A H1N1 had still affected over 115,800 people and killed 560 in China.

But there are also doubts as to whether the authorities overestimated the impact and seriousness of A H1N1, leading to a waste of money and resources, said Zhou Zijun, a professor from the School of Public Health at Peking University.

Tong agrees that there was some overreaction, as the influenza strain was neither as contagious as SARS nor as deadly as bird flu.

The central government had allocated about 5 billion yuan ($801 million) in preventing and treating A H1N1 as well as issuing surplus vaccines for the disease that are now piling up.

"It shows that our judgment about an epidemic, about its potential influence, is problematic: we underestimated SARS and went overboard with A H1N1," said Professor Zhou.

Caution prevails

Zeng, however, believe when there are people's lives at stake, there's nothing wrong with taking extra caution. He said that all in all, China did a good job handling A H1N1.

Besides the lack of experience and an emergency response system at the time of the SARS outbreak, a major reason that the disease took such a big toll on people's lives was the official coverup.

In March 2003, Tong, the respiratory physician, was asked to consult on SARS patients in Beijing along with other doctors. There were dozens, if not hundreds of cases, at the time in Beijing. But the public knew very little of what was really going on.

"I knew that things like this couldn't be kept a secret forever; the truth would come out eventually," said Tong.

There were already rumors around the country about the disease and some people were stocking up on masks, vinegar and cough medicines. But accurate, authoritative information was scarce.

The authorities didn't address the issue until early April, when Zhang Wenkang, health minister at the time, downplayed the situation at a press conference and said there were over 1,000 cases in China and only 13 cases in Beijing. He reassured the public that the disease was under control.

The officials didn't face the truth until Jiang Yanyong, a retired doctor from the PLA General Hospital (also known as 301 Hospital) in Beijing, blew the whistle and told Time magazine that there were many more cases than officials had disclosed. On April 20, health officials updated the number of cases in Beijing to 339 and over 1,800 in the country.

It was an attempt to maintain stability and harmony prior to the annual legislative meetings, analysts later sought to explain the coverups.

The days around these legislative meetings are when the public should fully express their opinions and concerns, but instead the people and media are hushed up, said Yu Guoming, a professor of journalism and communications at Renmin University of China.

Coverups are not uncommon when authorities handle crises such as coal mine accidents, natural disasters or environmental catastrophes. This represented the old way of thinking and governing that price stability and control are above everything else, said Yu, who leads the Public Opinion Institute.

According to a survey the institute carried out immediately after SARS, the public rated the government's performance at 46 out of 100 before officials told the truth.