Joint efforts will be key to victory

Huanggang, a prefecture-level city in Hubei province, introduced a regulation on Saturday that stipulates each family can send only one member out to buy daily necessities once in two days in a bid to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus in the city.

A day later, Wenzhou, a prefecture-level city in Zhejiang province, implemented a similar regulation.

It means that Huanggang, a city with a population of 8.5 million and located 116 kilometers to the east of Wuhan, and Wenzhou, home to 9.25 million residents and 866 km to the east of Wuhan, have been pushed to the front line in fighting the epidemic.

Wuhan and Huanggang are at the center of a city cluster in central Hubei that consists of eight cities and is home to 35 million people. Wenzhou is at the south of the Yangtze River Delta city cluster, where 150 million people live. The new regulation implemented by Huanggang and Wenzhou should be seen as another necessary and crucial move to curb the spread of the virus. It also shows how serious the situation is.

Wuhan has caught worldwide attention as the epicenter of the virus outbreak, and has thus become a destination for volunteer doctors and nurses, and donations of all badly needed medical materials and equipment.

Attention must also be paid to the peripheral areas, such as Huanggang and other smaller satellite towns, and regions that also suffer heavily from the epidemic, such as Zhejiang province.

The question is whether public security systems, such as the one regarding public health, should be networked across a city cluster, where people-to-people exchanges have become a daily routine and cities are connected via expressways and high-speed railway.

Definitely yes. It takes coordinated efforts and quick responses to control risks in time.

Sadly, the outbreak of the epidemic from Wuhan and its fast spread to neighboring cities have shown how far the central Hubei city cluster is from that scenario. Had it not been for the central authorities' timely coordination, the anti-epidemic campaigns would have remained confined to the respective city governments.

China has at least 20 city clusters, or megacities, of that scale. The emergency measures that Wenzhou and Huanggang took over the weekend indicate that it is time for the cities to establish workable mechanisms that can coordinate their endeavors during emergencies.

Otherwise, the sheer scale of the megacities would itself represent a threat to the public.

Officials must adapt to new circumstances and demands, since the epidemic shows that only sweeping one's own doorstep will not be enough to serve local people.

This is also the case around the world. The dark side of globalization can be addressed only through joint efforts.

The author is a writer at China Daily.?