The main challenge
The main challenge may include (1) early identification of outbreak, (2) rapid expansion of patients, (3) high risk of nosocomial transmission, (4) unpredictability of size impacted, and (5) lack of backup resource. These challenges have caused severe shortage of healthcare workers, medical materials, and beds with isolation. The Spring Festival holiday has greatly aggravated the shortage of human resources and heavy traffic flow due to the vacation of healthy workers and factory workers, which further magnified the risk of transmission. The key point is to discriminate the infectious disease outbreak from regular clustering cases of flu-like diseases at early stage. There is a trade-off between false alarm causing population panic and delayed identification leading to social crisis.