The notion of resilience to analyse how fast systems recover from shocks has been increasingly taken up in economic geography, in which there is a burgeoning literature on regional resilience. Regional resilience is a place‐sensitive, multi‐layered and multi‐scalar, conflict‐ridden and highly contingent process. The nature of shocks is one important impact factor on regional resilience. Arguably, so far, most literature on regional resilience has dealt with the financial crisis in 2008/2009. In this research note, we will analyse both the particular characteristics of the current COVID‐19 crisis, as well as its effects on regional recovery and potential resilience in China, where it started. We conclude that a complex combination of the characteristics of the current COVID‐19 crisis, the institutional experience of dealing with previous pandemic and epidemic crises, government support schemes, as well as regional industrial structures, might potentially affect the recovery and resilience rates of Chinese regions.

Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a common infectious disease, causing thousands of deaths among children in China over the past two decades. Environmental risk factors such as meteorological factors, population factors and economic factors may affect the incidence of HFMD. In the current paper, we used a novel model—geographical detector technique to analyze the effect of these factors on the incidence of HFMD in China. We collected HFMD cases from 2,309 counties during May 2008 in China. The monthly cumulative incidence of HFMD was calculated for children aged 0–9 years. Potential risk factors included meteorological factors, economic factors, and population density factors. Four geographical detectors (risk detector, factor detector, ecological detector, and interaction detector) were used to analyze the effects of some potential risk factors on the incidence of HFMD in China. We found that tertiary industry and children exert more influence than first industry and middle school students on the incidence of HFMD. The interactive effect of any two risk factors increases the hazard for HFMD transmission.

To reveal the spatio-temporal distribution of malaria vectors in the national malaria surveillance sites from 2005 to 2010 and provide reference for the current National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) in China. A 6-year longitudinal surveillance on density of malaria vectors was carried out in the 62 national malaria surveillance sites. The spatial and temporal analyses of the four primary vectors distribution were conducted by the methods of kernel k-means and the cluster distribution of the most widely distribution vector of An.sinensis was identified using the empirical mode decomposition (EMD). Totally 4 species of Anopheles mosquitoes including An.sinensis, An.lesteri, An.dirus and An.minimus were captured with significant difference of distribution as well as density. An. sinensis was the most widely distributed, accounting for 96.25% of all collections, and its distribution was divided into three different clusters with a significant increase of density observed in the second cluster which located mostly in the central parts of China. This study first described the spatio-temporal distribution of malaria vectors based on the nationwide surveillance during 2005–2010, which served as a baseline for the ongoing national malaria elimination program.