[IMAGE: CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES]

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic is China’s fastest-spreading, most infectious and hardest to contain major public health emergency since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

With the joint efforts of the whole nation, the positive trend in preventing and controlling the epidemic has been constantly consolidated and expanded, and the restoration of normal production and everyday life has been quickened.

The pandemic has recently been spreading rapidly across the world, posing a formidable challenge to global public health security. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 had affected more than 200 countries and regions with over 2.7 million confirmed cases by April 26, 2020.

Viruses know no national borders and distinguish no races. Only with solidarity and by cooperation can the international community prevail over the pandemic and safeguard the common homeland of humanity. Upholding the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, China has been releasing information on COVID-19 since the onset of the epidemic in an open, transparent and responsible manner, unreservedly sharing with the WHO and the international community its experience in epidemic response and medical treatment, and strengthening cooperation on scientific research. It has also provided assistance to all parties to the best of its ability.

The relevant research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have invested a lot of relevant scientific research power to carry out virus tracing, information dissemination, rapid detection, drug screening and vaccine and antibody development, providing scientific and technological support for curbing the spread of the epidemic. On April 7, 2020, Xinhua News Agency published "China Issues New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic Situation Information and Promotes International Cooperation Chronicle of Epidemic Prevention and Control", in which 12 accomplishments of the Chinese Academy of Sciences are listed.

January 2020

January 10

-- Research institutions including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) developed testing kits. Wuhan City organized testing of all relevant cases admitted to hospitals in the city.

January 12

-- The China CDC, the CAMS and the WIV under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as designated agencies of the NHC, submitted to the WHO the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was published by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) and shared globally.

January 21

-- Researchers from the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai under CAS, the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences, and CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences published a paper in the English version of "Science China Life Science," titled "Evolution of the Novel Coronavirus from the Ongoing Wuhan Outbreak and Modeling of Its Spike Protein for Risk of Human Transmission," evaluating the potential human-to-human transmission capacity of the virus, providing a scientific theoretical basis for confirming the source and transmission route of infection as soon as possible and formulating prevention and control strategies.

January 22

-- The 2019 Novel Coronavirus Resource (2019nCoVR), a database developed by the China National Center for Bioinformation, was officially launched to release worldwide the novel coronavirus genome and information on variation analysis.

January 23

-- Researchers from WIV under CAS, Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital and the Hubei Provincial CDC found that the full-length genome sequences of the 2019-nCoV shares 79.5 percent of the SARS-CoV sequence, and published their results on the bioRxiv preprint platform.

January 24

-- The National Microbiology Data Center and the National Pathogen Resources Collection Center jointly established the Novel Coronavirus National Science and Technology Resource Service System and released the first electron microscope picture of the virus together with strain information.

January 29

-- A thesis on the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus by a research team of the WIV of CAS was formally accepted by the journal Nature.

-- Researchers from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and WIV under CAS published an article in the Lancet, titled "Epidemiological and Clinical Characteristics of 99 Cases of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia in Wuhan, China: A Descriptive Study", sharing data regarding clinical features and treatment of novel coronavirus patients.

-- A research team of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under CAS published an article on the bioRxiv preprint platform that gave research results about drugs by computer-simulated screening.

-- Researchers of the Institute of Automation under CAS published an article on the medRxiv preprint platform, estimating the development trend of the epidemic based on daily reported novel coronavirus cases by the China CDC.

February 2020

February 4

-- Researchers from WIV under CAS and the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences released a paper in the journal Cell Research titled "Remdesivir and Chloroquine Effectively Inhibit the Recently Emerged Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Vitro."

March 2020

March 13

-- Experts from the University of Science and Technology of China and its first affiliated hospital published an article titled “Pathogenic T cells and Inflammatory Storm in Severe COVID-19 Patients.”

Source: Xinhua