The National Health Commission is working with other departments to establish a long-acting emergency reserve mechanism for medical materials and equipment, a senior official at the commission said on Wednesday.

Mao Qunan, director of the commission's Department of Planning, said the novel coronavirus outbreak has exposed the shortcomings of the country's emergency reserve for medical equipment.

Emergency reserve is very important for the country to handle other emergencies in the future, Mao said at a daily news conference, without giving further details.

In an article published on Sunday in the Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the commission called for improving the existing emergency reserve system and establishing a national emergency material supply system to improve the production and layout of important emergency materials.

The country also should establish an allocation mechanism in case of any short-term shortage of materials, the article said.

A cross-department and cross-regional supply system should be strengthened and the country also should establish a monitoring system for raw material, production, distribution, storage and use of emergency equipment, it said.