What's Shanghai experience of COVID-19 management?

Editor's Notes:

Under the stress of this COVID-19 pandemic, physicians around the world are struggling on finding the plan for prevention and treatment of COVID-19. In Shanghai, all the diagnosed COVID-19 cases go to Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. Since Jan 2020, the expert physicians in Shanghai have taken care of 371 cases and most of these patients recovered. The Shanghai experts have accumulated tremendous experiences and knowledge. We would like to share one lecture with all the physicians around the world. Together we can beat the virus.

The speaker Professor Hu Bijie is a member of the Shanghai Combined Task Force on COVID-19. He is also the chief of Department of Infectious Disease and chief of Department of Infection Control of Zhongshan hospital affiliated to Shanghai Fudan University.

COVID-19 has caused many death and critical cases all over the world. "Shanghai Plan" has focused on risk assessment, prognosis prediction, and combination therapy for early intervention to prevent the development of severe cases. According to Professor Hu among all the medications used, Hydroxychloroquine was found to effectively and safely prevent the progression of disease and minimize the numbers of severe and critical patients. The fact is new severe and critical COVID-19 cases in Shanghai have decreased significantly since February 5th, suggesting Hydroxychloroquine might be one of the correct medications to reverse this pandemic.

Considering the strategic value of prevention and intervention of severe COVID-19 cases, we believe that the initial observational data from Shanghai might provide reference for physicians around the world although the effectiveness and safety of the Hydroxychloroquine in the "Shanghai Plan" needs to be further evaluated through randomized control studies.

COVID-19 is one of the most challenging pandemic diseases in the history of modern medicine. We are seeing a little ray of hope now and with the joint efforts from all over the world, it is believed that this pandemic will soon hit a turning point.

Dr. Kathy Shi, MD, Ph.D,

CEO, SinoUnited Health