On the evening of March 27th, Beijing time, Tsinghua University Latin America Center held a video conference on “Sharing China’s valuable experience with Chile and Latin America and fight against the virus together”, inviting Dr. Hong MA and Dr. Yi NING to deliver speeches at Tsinghua Forum in order to share their thoughts with Chile and Latin America. The conference was co-organized by Chilean Foundation País Digital, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, University of Chile, Andrés bello University, and University for Development.

Yi NING is the Executive Dean of the MeinianPublic Health Institute of Peking University and a senior expert in epidemiology. He is currently working on disease prevention and health management through evidence-based and data-driven approaches and wrote a book entitled "Prevention of COVID-19 and Examples Interpretation". In the meeting, he gave an in-depth explanation with the theme of "Epidemiologists' Experience and Lessons in the Prevention and Control of COVID-19". Firstly, he gave examples to demonstrate the spread routes and the fast transmission speed of this pandemic. He pointed out COVID-19 is not a seasonal flu, but a very dangerous pandemic that can cross national borders.

“There are three key points for the prevention and control: the first is to determine the source to spread disease and isolate it; the second is to confirm the transmission route, and cut it off. Keeping social distance can effectively reduce infections; the third key point is to protect susceptible population such as children and the elderly.” NING said.

“The medical staff is extremely valuable and in very shortage this time, I hope the Chilean friends can really protect their doctors and nurses. “NING also emphasized.

After an analysis about the accumulative confirmed cases of Chile from the outbreak to the present, Yi NING believed that the spread of COVID-19 in Chile was very fast. “The number of confirmed cases has exceeded 1,000 cases, and the number of newly increased patients had tripled in 4 days. This means the virus has spread from family to community.” He said. NING hopes that an alert can be given through this meeting and Chilean friends can pay more attention to the development of the current pandemic situation, and make more efforts. “I hope the pandemic can be effectively contained in Chile.” the experts said.

Lecture through video conference

Then, Dr. Hong MA introduced the countermeasures for panic psychology originated from COVID-19 crisis from the perspective of a senior psychologist.Hong MA is an expert of COVID-19 Pneumonia Experts Group of National Health Commission and theDeputy Chief Director at Mental Health Center, CCDC. She has participated in psychological crisis interventions in many social emergencies such as SARS, the Wenchuan earthquake, the Yushu earthquake, COVID-19 and so on. She believes that it is important and necessary to strengthen the training for medical staff. In China, 41,000 medical staff rushed to rescue in Wuhan, and they are 100% healthy according to the government. The intensive protection training really contributed a lot.

MA also indicated that hundreds of mental experts were sent to assist patients and medical staff to carry out psychological counseling and achieved good results.

“To reduce public panic, the most important thing is to make correct decisions.” MA pointed out especially.

From China's experience, the expert gave several suggestions to alleviate social panic, such as creating a command center, improving multi-sector cooperation mechanism, establishing a multidisciplinary specialist team to advise the command center, and strengthening protection for the people and medical staff.

After the lectures, the participants asked questions about the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, the optimal protective equipment, fast test to all sources and the emotional needs of medical staff, etc., and get detailed professional answers from the experts.

Fernando Reyes Matta, former Chilean ambassador to China and Director of Latin America-China Studies Center at Andrés Bello University, said that no matter in the initial or outbreak period, psychological policies is necessary to deal with the social panic caused by the coronavirus.

Professor Eduardo Vera, Director of Foreign Affairs of the University of Chile, expressed the gratitude to the experts for their outstanding lectures. “Many medical experts from our University participated actively in the event. They believed that the experts’ thoughts are valuable for Chile under the current situation,” he said.

“The exchange was positive and effective. We will share the valuable experience brought by the two experts in our country, provide suggestions to policymakers to really adopt and rearrange our capacity to confront this epidemic.” said Dr. Pedro Bouchon, Vice President of Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Dr. Taotao Chen, Director of Tsinghua University Latin America Center, chaired the meeting. She said that China has now achieved a decisive victory in the prevention and control of COVID-19, but the epidemic situation in Chile and Latin America become more critical. With such grim situation, the Center, as a platform for promoting exchanges between China and Chile and Latin America, organized such event in order to share China’s valuable experience with Chile and Latin America and fight against the virus together.

A total of 130 representatives participated in the video conference, including leaders, medical experts and students from the four Chilean universities indicated above, experts from governmental agencies like the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Chilean Embassy in China, Corfo, InvestChile, ProChile, experts from health institutions, representatives of Chilean Foundation País Digital and Chile Security Group, and Chinese companies such as China Construction Bank, Bank of China, State Power Investment Corporation Limited, China Harbour, Huawei, Nuctech, Dahua Group and Didi Chuxing and so on.