OBJECTIVES:

In the month that followed December 7, 2022, China gradually lifted almost all of covid-19 pandemic restrictions, and then the number of infected grows rapidly with large demand for conventional medicines. Following the sudden reopening, this study aims to explore the community resilience outcomes of users in the most popular Chinese social media platform Weibo.

METHODS:

We chose Beijing, one of the first reopening large cities in China, as our sample area. We collected all COVID-19-related continuous Weibo posts with geotagged between December 8, 2022 and January 7, 2023 using search terms of “Help” posts and three conventional drugs of COVID-19 which are already in shortage on the market. Word clouds and coding schemes were used to analyze the contents and review the users’ needs and replies they received, specifically whether users’ medication access problem was addressed through a neighborhood-level efforts.

RESULTS:

A total of 30652 posts were retrieved that include reposts and reposts with replies. Over two-third of the COVID-19 related posts were seeking drugs, with 79% demands has been solved. For all the posts which received solution, about 65.82% received supports from the neighborhood-level, while 34.18% were resolved with government assistance. The posts with community support were more time-efficient. The number of posts receiving government support grows over time, which was less in the first two weeks and then has a significant increase after December 23, 2022.

CONCLUSIONS:

Our study demonstrated the community support were more timeliness than government assistance. We also indicate that enhancing community resilience is a critical response to public health emergencies.