I’d like to share something very important that you might not hear from anyone else. China appears to have plateaued with the number of COVID-19 cases mid February. There are a number of reasons for this including ambitious containment efforts and the solidarity of provinces sending support to those communities most vulnerable. I’d like to highlight foremost their integration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) along with western medicine that was ordered by the Chinese government on February 10, 2020.
John Hopkins Global Cases. Orange is China, Yellow is all other countries, Green is total recovered
There was a notice that was released from their Prevention and Control Headquarters to administer Chinese medicine (by herbal decoction or granules) in all medical establishments in Wuhan beginning February 3. More than 85% of all patients with coronavirus, approximately 60,000 people, received herbal treatment along with western medicine treatments as of the end of February 2020.
This article speaks of observations 1/29/20- 2/4/20 at the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine and Guandong Provincial TCM Hospital along with two other hospitals that used a combination of Chinese and western medicine. I highly recommend taking a look for yourself, but I will summarize in short that pneumonia patients who were so weak they could not speak were able to sit up in a matter of a few days, utter full sentences, and practice qi gong. Many other symptoms such as shortness of breath, bowel dysregulation, dry mouth began to improve and most patients eventually had full recoveries.
TCM experts facilitating this kind of care in China were classifying the 4 phases of the infection to be prevention, early phase, pneumonia phase, and recovery. Chinese medicine diagnoses conditions based on an individuals’ symptoms and not the name of a disease; therefore, you find several presentations they were working with which each have their own set of symptoms and herbal treatment. Upon infection in the early phase diagnoses were wind cold invading the exterior, toxic heat attacking the lung, and damp cold in the lung. In the pneumonia phase, they saw shao yang syndrome with dampness, damp heat afflicting the lung, toxic stagnation obstructing the lung, and closed interior and abandoned exterior syndrome. The recovery phase showed lung and spleen qi deficiency and deficiency of qi and yin.
Chinese herbal formulas were also readily available for hospital workers taking prevention measures with great success and no signs of infection in well over 1,000 people. A similar measure was also taken during the SARS epidemic with a similar finding of no infection of hospital staff.
On February 19, 2020 a medical app was released allowing COVID-19 cases to be paired up with a TCM doctor. Appointments and direct communication could happen with their doctor on a daily basis including regularly adjusting herbal prescriptions that would carry them through to recovery.
Because of the success of Chinese medicine implementation at certain hospitals during the pandemic, more discussion has surfaced on incorporating TCM theories into early childhood eduction in the Zhejiang Provenience.
From the Western Han Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, at least 321 large scale plagues happened in China and each time Chinese medicine has been on the frontline of treatment saving lives including our current pandemic. They were equipped to handle COVID-19 because of many reasons; TCM being one of them.
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References:
How COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) is Currently Treated in China with TCM
Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)