COVID-19 vaccine most important for the world now, says Shanghai medical expert

Effective COVID-19 vaccines and medicine rather than cases of second infection have more value in terms of discussion within the medical circle today, said a leading infectious disease expert in Shanghai during the ongoing 2020 Pujiang Innovation Forum on Thursday.

Zhang Wenhong, leader of the Shanghai team of experts in the clinical treatment of novel coronavirus pneumonia cases, explained that this is because there are only nine people among the 40 million COVID-19 cases in the world who have been found to be infected for the second time.

The cause of a second infection, he added, should be related to either virus sequencing factors or the patients' own immunity.

"Thanks to the efforts of the world's scientists and medical workers, we're awaiting effective therapies that are able to reduce the mortality rate of severe patients and effective vaccines to protect the vulnerable groups," Zhang said.

He also noted that the prevention and control of the first wave of the virus' spread in China was a relative success and the focus for the country now lies in imported cases. Zhang is also optimistic about the country's ability to prevent the spread of the virus from imported cases.

"However, how the pandemic will ultimately evolve depends on how well it can be brought under control around the entire world. The pandemic will never come to an end if the control level is good at home but is still not ideal abroad," he said.

The main task for the world at this moment is to break the imbalance of pandemic control between countries through international collaboration and scientific and technological innovations, he added.

Chen Kaixian, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an expert in new drug research, said that countries should strengthen mutual exchange and collaboration during their research on vaccines and medicines.

"Rapid publishing and sharing with scientists around the world on research results related to subjects such as viral genome sequencing and viral protein will be vital to research progress regarding vaccines and medicines," he said.