Shanghai doctor talks about antiviral treatment, TCM

Public health experts from China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and the US discussed experiences and lessons learned from the front-line responses to COVID-19 on Friday.

The panelists at the webinar convened by The John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute called for close collaboration globally to fight against the pandemic.

"China has just gone through a very dark moment. However with the (pandemic) still spreading throughout the world, I think we should work together to fight the disease and I hope that...our experience as a first wave can be shared by other countries," said Zhang Wenhong, director of Huashan Hospital's department of infectious disease and of the Shanghai panel overseeing the treatment of COVID-19.

Zhang said the key to stopping the spread of disease is early control in local transmission. He said the Shanghai CDC has been able to trace every patient and suspected cases.

"We do the test for every suspected patient we found without charging money. So, everything is free. We do it very quickly, so this helps us to timely find these people and quarantine the suspected cases and quarantine the close contacts," said Zhang.

The timely diagnoses and timely quarantine measures in Shanghai have been effective to stop the circulation of COVID-19 in the city. Zhang said, "This activity did not cause an overall impact on normal citizens' lives because we quarantined every suspected case we found and none of them spread disease further in our community."As a result, Shanghai had enough medical resources to treat just several hundred cases and the mortality rate in Shanghai was only 1 percent.