China's top 10 scientific advances in 2020

China's Ministry of Science and Technology unveiled the country's top 10 scientific advances of 2020 on Saturday.

1. Chinese scientists make remarkable progress in tackling COVID-19

Chinese scientists teamed up to make a quick response to COVID-19 from the outset, making progress on various fronts while offering strong support to the nation to overcome the pandemic.

In January 2020, China's Center for Disease Control succeeded in isolating the first novel coronavirus strain and shared with the WHO information on the genomic sequence of the virus. They have revealed how the novel coronavirus infects human cells and continued probing how it is transmitted.

Combining Western methods and traditional Chinese medicine, eight editions of guidelines on diagnosis and treatment for pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus were published successively. More prevention and control measures were proposed such as setting up makeshift hospitals, conducting mass nucleic acid tests and using big data in tracing virus carriers.

Vaccines against the virus, including the inactivated vaccines, adenovirus vector vaccines, protein subunit vaccines and RNA vaccines are in the development with their efforts.