BEIJING -- The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday outlined how its nationwide online reporting network allows decision-makers to be informed of epidemics within four hours after outbreak.

The network for reporting epidemics and public health emergencies, the world's largest, received uploads from 68,000 monitoring agencies, according to the China CDC.

The country first put a communicable disease reporting system in place in 1959. In the early stages of its operation, it usually took months for handwritten reports to be delivered to central decision-makers.

Since the China CDC launched the online reporting system in 2004, however, real-time online reporting of communicable diseases has been realized among 100 percent of the country's CDCs at county level and above, 98 percent of hospitals at county level and above, as well as 94 percent of grass-roots clinics.

At present, 20,000 types of communicable disease are monitored on a daily basis.

Facilitated by real-time monitoring and analysis, China is now capable of early detection of 360 to 450 abnormal incidences each year, and exchanges risk warnings with the World Health Organization, neighboring countries and domestic press more frequently.

Moreover, the China CDC said the system has played an enormous role in the country's battles with A/H1N1 influenza, bird flu, and potential outbreaks of disease following the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 as well as other natural disasters.

In the latest case, the system helped win time for prevention and control of H7N9 avian influenza in 2013.