An employee, surnamed Yang, from the Dujiagou community office in Qianjiang, said, "People were against the strict measures at first, thinking the virus was far away and that prevention work had nothing to do with them."

She said she tells residents to go home when she sees anyone on the streets, and after an extensive publicity campaign, people have been cooperating.

Information about the virus has been distributed in the city via television programs, short videos, social media platforms and even through loudspeakers.

Mass screenings against the virus have been carried out, during which 37,092 people were found to have had some type of contact with Wuhan. Among these, 470 had a fever and were quarantined immediately. Some hotels and public buildings have been transformed into quarantine facilities.

The strict and rapid action taken in Qianjiang has set an example for the rest of Hubei, with the provincial government recently releasing a notice requesting other areas to learn from the measures adopted by the city.

Meanwhile, in Zhejiang, one of the provinces outside Hubei most severely hit by the outbreak, advanced technology, including big data, has been playing a vital role in the prevention and control of the virus and in recovery efforts.

A developed region where the digital economy has developed rapidly in recent years, Zhejiang has rolled out a series of measures with the help of emerging technologies aimed at containing the virus and encouraging the resumption of business. The measures have been termed "one map, one code and one index".

In a video conference on Feb 14,Yuan Jiajun, the provincial governor, stressed the importance of controlling the epidemic "precisely and intelligently", adding that there should be "strict management and orderly operations" amid the outbreak.

Four days earlier, the authorities in Zhejiang released a map detailing the latest information about the virus through data collected from around the province.

The provincial government assessed the chances of people in all county-level regions becoming infected by using five colors to mark areas with different levels of risk. The information was based on the total number of confirmed patients, the proportion of patients to all residents, cases arising from gatherings and the number of new confirmed cases over the past three days.