JAMAICAN health officials participated in a videoconference on the prevention and control of COVID-19 with their counterparts in China, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Chinese Embassy in Kingston said in a news release on Wednesday.

About 200 officials, including representatives from the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, Pan American Health Organization, and Inter-American Development Bank participated in the March 24 videoconference, which lasted for more than three hours and achieved positive results, the embassy stated.

“Chinese experts talked in detail about the trajectory and features of the epidemic and Chinese experience in disease control, clinical treatment, customs administration and community-based quarantine and gave thorough answers to their foreign counterparts’ questions,” the embassy said.

“Going forward, China will uphold the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind and follow closely the situation in Latin American and Caribbean countries. We will do our utmost to coordinate domestic resources and enhance cooperation with these countries in light of their needs to jointly overcome the challenge posed by the virus,” the embassy added.

The embassy said Caribbean and Latin American participants “spoke highly of China’s effective measures to contain the virus and its important contributions to global public health security. They believed this timely, professional and efficient videoconference offered important guidance for their countries”.

The embassy said Caribbean and Latin American experts expressed interest in drawing on China’s experience and maintaining communication and coordination with China to defeat the pandemic together.

The videoconference comes on the heels of news out of China that 74,187 confirmed COVID-19 patients in that country, which account for 91.5 per cent of the total infections on the Chinese mainland, have been administered traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as part of their treatment.

Of that number, more than 90 per cent have shown improvement during clinical observation, an article in China Daily reported Yu Yanhong, party secretary and top official of the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

“TCM has effectively relieved symptoms, cut the rate of patients developing into severe conditions, raised the recovery rate, reduced the mortality rate and boosted patients’ recovery,” Yu said.

The China Daily story reported Huang Luqi, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, as saying that XuanFeiBaiDu Granule can increase the lymphocyte recovery rate by 17 per cent and the clinical cure rate by 22 per cent in the controlled observation.

The report added that Liu Qingquan, head of the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said two TCM drugs — Jinhua Qinggan Granule and Lianhua Qingwen Capsule/Granule — have proven to be effective in the treatment of mild COVID-19 cases, while Xuebijing Injection can help treat inflammation and coagulation dysfunction.

“Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that TCM treatment has significantly lowered the proportion of patients whose conditions turned from mild to severe,” China Daily reported.

“None of the 564 patients at the TCM-oriented temporary hospital in Wuhan saw their health condition deteriorating into severe,” said Zhang. “We have therefore applied TCM treatment to over 10,000 patients in other makeshift hospitals, and the rate of patients developing into severe conditions were substantially reduced.”