To help with the global fight against COVID-19, Taikang Insurance Group recently organized an online forum on the disease. (Photo: Taikang Insurance Group)

To help with the global fight against COVID-19, Taikang Insurance Group recently organized an online forum on the disease, featuring top Chinese medical experts to share disease prevention and treatment experiences with foreign medical workers.

Jointly initiated by the company's recently established Taikang Public Health and Epidemic Control Fund and the Wuhan University alumni association of Beijing, the online forum, held on April 18, invited four nationally renowned experts who have been working on the frontline of COVID-19 patient care ---Tong Zhaohui, Qiu Haibo, Du Bin and Cao Zhaolong, to share their expertise through an online conference application, attracting more than 1 million medical workers in attendance, as well as ordinary people.

Doctors from countries including the United States, Canada, Nepal, India, Singapore, Iraq, United Kingdom, Malawi, and South Africa sought answers for problems they'd encountered during their treatment of the disease, mostly first-line doctors in fields such as respiratory medicine, ICU and infectious diseases.

The virus knows no border, but Chinese doctors' efforts to share their professional experiences in COVID-19 patient care contribute to the global fight against the pandemic, the company said.

Tong shared when and how to conduct surgeries on COVID-19 patients, answering questions from a Chinese medical aid team for Malawi, and Cao answered inquiries on management of false-negative patients from US doctors.

It is common that test results fail to be positive, due to limitations during sample collecting and reagent use, but as long as the suspected have symptoms, they should be treated as COVID-19 patients despite the negative test results, Cao said.

Qiu gave detailed directions on when and how to use invasive ventilators, while Du answered questions regarding home quarantine and symptom management, including when people under home quarantine must go to a hospital for professional treatment.

The experts also answered questions on choices of anti-virus drugs, cancer patient treatment, use of hormone drugs and anticoagulants, and whether human secretions such as sweat and semen are infectious.

The livestream of the online forum was available on the company's livestreaming platform, as well as news applications by People's Daily and NetEase and many other media.

Chen Dongsheng, founder, chairman and CEO of Taikang Insurance Group and president of the Wuhan University alumni association, said the forum was far more successful than he had expected, and he believes the down-to-earth communication among Chinese and foreign doctors the forum provided would help greatly with the global containment of the pandemic.

The company officially kicked off a top-level tertiary hospital during the disease outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, admitting more than 2,000 COVID-19 patients and ranking third among all designated hospitals in terms of patients treated.

The company has also donated money and supplies worth more than 100 million yuan to severely hit regions in China.

The fund, established at the end of January, issued project-funding application guidelines on Feb 18 and openly solicited research topics from both domestic and foreign research institutions. It also organized an academic seminar on April 5 with top-tier scientists on how Chinese and US healthcare systems respond to COVID-19.