Virtual clinics being set up to help tackle contagion

A former patient of the novel coronavirus in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, said she was excited and relieved to have defeated the infection after having been treated by Zhong Nanshan, a prominent Chinese expert in respiratory diseases and one of the leading experts tackling the outbreak.

The 65-year-old woman who had been hospitalized since Jan 11 was discharged from the hospital after she tested negative for the virus at the end of January.

Zhong, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, visited her ward and offered a diagnosis and treatment late last month before she was discharged.

The woman from Wuhan, Hubei province, said she believed other patients would also be able to recover soon and urged peers to have confidence, particularly as top experts like Zhong are also working together online to offer patients timely treatments.

Among the nation's first group of medical professionals organized to tackle the outbreak, 10 leading experts from Guangdong, led by Zhong, have conducted remote case consultations of the contagion since Jan 29.

They attended to five patients in serious and critical condition in Shenzhen and Zhuhai via remote online consultations. Related medical data like CT scans were displayed during their work.

Qin Tiehe, a senior disease expert at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital and a member of the team, said Zhong's remote consultation team is multidisciplinary in nature with doctors specializing in pulmonary and infectious diseases.

"All team members are top specialists at their respective hospitals," Qin said.

Duan Yufei, director general of the Guangdong Health Commission, said such remote consultations are held at least once a day and have been normalized to help as many patients as possible.

About 60 hospitals in Guangdong alone have now launched remote consultations, introducing Internet Plus and big data to offer medical services for suspected or confirmed novel coronavirus patients since Jan 23.

The "internet hospitals" allow patients with a fever to consult doctors, which helps optimize limited medical resources for more severe sufferers of the virus, according to a statement released by Duan's commission.

Nationwide, Guangdong is not alone in turning to the internet for medical consultation.

Many provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have launched remote consultations to help treat patients amid efforts to prevent and control the viral outbreak.