Covid-19 treatment handbooks issued compiling frontline experience

China's gift to the world is hard-won knowledge: ‘The real remedy for epidemics is not isolation, but cooperation.’

In an amazingly short time, the Chinese medical establishment has curated a guide to best practice in diagnosing and treating coronavirus patients in hospital.

This article was updated on Monday 30 March to reflect the issuing of two new handbooks from frontline Covid-19 fighters in China. Please circulate it widely.

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Having successfully identified the new coronavirus, Covid-19, China’s medical workers have also fought a tremendous battle to stop the spread of the infection and find the best way to treat those who are suffering from it.

Once the epidemic had been brought under control in China and there were very few new cases appearing there, the Zhejiang University School of Medicine summarised the hard-won experience of the country’s frontline staff into an essential handbook for hospital medics.

Sadly, many governments around the world are unwilling to admit that China might have anything to teach them, so we are asking individuals to do what they can to share this essential knowledge with medical workers on the new frontlines.

Let us do what we can to make sure our people can benefit from China’s experience and our doctors have the best chance of saving the lives of those who become critically ill.

* Download a pdf of the Handbook of Covid-19 Prevention and treatment.

* Download a pdf of the Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (Trial Version 7) released by China’s National Health Commission and State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

* Download a pdf of China’s advice document on the Protocol for Prevention and Control of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (Edition 6).

Foreword to Covid-19 handbook by Professor Tingbo Liang, editor

This is an unprecedented global war, and mankind is facing the same enemy, the novel coronavirus. And the first battlefield is the hospital where our soldiers are the medical workers.

To ensure that this war can be won, we must first make sure that our medical staff is guaranteed sufficient resources, including experience and technologies. Also, we need to make sure that the hospital is the battleground where we eliminate the virus, not where the virus defeats us.

Therefore, Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Foundation have convened a group of medical experts who have just returned from the frontlines of fighting the pandemic. With the support of The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine (FAHZU), they quickly published a guidebook on the clinical experience of how to treat this new coronavirus. The treatment guide offers advice and reference against the pandemic for medical staff around the world who are about to join the war.

Thanks to the medical staff from FAHZU. While taking huge risks in treating Covid-19 patients, they wrote down their treatment experience day and night in this handbook.

Over the past 50 days, 104 confirmed patients have been admitted to FAHZU, including 78 severe and critically ill ones. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of medical staff and the application of new technologies, to date, we have witnessed a miracle. No staff is infected, and there is no missed diagnosis or patient deaths.

Today, with the spread of the pandemic, these experiences are the most valuable sources of information and the most important weapon for medical workers on the battlefield. This is a brand-new disease, and China was the first to suffer from the pandemic. Isolation, diagnosis, treatment, protective measures, and rehabilitation have all been started from scratch, but we hope that with the advent of this handbook doctors and nurses in other affected areas can learn from our experience when entering the battlefield and they won’t have to start from zero.

This pandemic is a common challenge faced by mankind in the age of globalisation. At this moment, sharing resources, experiences and lessons, regardless of who you are, is our only chance to win. Because the real remedy for epidemics is not isolation, but cooperation.

This war has just begun.

A message from the China’s communists

Writing to our party, a representative of the Chinese communist party explained:

“In response to the outbreak of Covid-19, the 1.4 billion Chinese people have been working together through trials and tribulations under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core. Political parties and governments of various countries together with people from all walks of life have also lent their generous support.

“As a result, the current epidemic prevention and control situation across China continues to improve, with sustained momentum in the rapid restoration of economic and social order. The coordinated implementation of epidemic control tasks and those relating to economic and social development has yielded positive results.

“At present, as the Covid-19 outbreak is spreading rapidly across the globe, it constitutes a serious challenge to both the health of humanity and world peace and development. On 26 March, general secretary Xi Jinping attended the extraordinary G20 leaders’ summit on Covid-19 and called upon the international community to strengthen coordination in fighting the outbreak.

“He also expressed China’s willingness to share China’s good practice, to step up cooperation with all other countries, and to provide assistance to the best of its ability.

“Being keenly aware of the difficulties facing countries severely affected by the epidemic, we have been working with all sides to fight the epidemic by sharing China’s good practice, providing support and help where we can and by various other means.

“Bearing in mind the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, we will continue to do so and work together with all sides toward closer cooperation in various fields in an effort to prevail as early as possible over the outbreak, humanity’s common enemy.

“We hope that these two publications might be of use to your party and your country in your fight against the epidemic.”

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To understand more about where the hostility towards China comes from, read our short pamphlet, The Drive to War Against Russia and China.