The National Health Commission ("NHC") has recently issued the Circular on Implementing Several Measures for Improving Working Conditions for Frontline Medical Workers to Effectively Care about Physical and Mental Health of Medical Workers (the "Circular").
The Circular sets out requirements in seven aspects, including safeguarding the work and life of medical workers, strengthening psychological crisis intervention and counseling for them, and practically distributing temporary allowances. According to the Circular, demands for medical protective supplies should be estimated in advance, and efforts should be made to coordinate the supply of medical protective gears through the department of industry and information technology, the development and reform commission and other relevant departments, allocate more protective gears to medical workers engaged in frontline clinical treatment, implement thorough protective measures to ensure their safety, effectively organize the health checks of frontline medical workers, and put in place the health monitoring system. Moreover, the Circular clarifies that administrative departments of health shall timely pay close attention to those medical personnel infected with the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) when they perform their duties during the COVID-19 prevention and control and the treatment of patients, and to the fatalities caused by COVID-19 infections, cooperate with the departments of human resources and social security and the departments of finance in providing the green passage for identification of work-related injury, and offer work-related injury insurance benefits for the abovesaid medical workers as quickly as possible.