http://www.bjreview.com MARCH 12, 2020 BEIJING REVIEW 13
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Y
i Jinyu, a community worker in
Yichun in Jiangxi Province, east
China, has gained magic wings to
help him combat the novel coro-
navirus epidemic.
He and his colleagues had to visit local
residents door-to-door every day to record
their temperatures, as communities and vil-
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the epidemic, but residents worried such
visits could cause cross-infection.
So the community turned to technology
to allay the fear. They began to use a drone
whose infrared thermal imaging lens can
take temperatures, and now the innovation
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The drone also has a loudspeaker. When
it comes near a residence, the loudspeaker
blares out an announcement and people
come to their windows to have their tem-
perature taken. This ingenious practice has
ended the need for close contact between
community workers and residents and re-
duced the risk of infection.
Drones are used in many cities to carry
out increasingly more diversified epidemic
prevention and control tasks, such as
broadcasting messages about how to take
protective measures and spray disinfectants
in public spaces.
“Science and technology are the most
powerful weapon in humanity’s battle
against diseases,” President Xi Jinping said
during his visit to the Academy of Military
Medical Sciences and the School of Medicine
at Tsinghua University in Beijing on March 2,
when he urged advancing coordinated sci-
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“Mankind cannot defeat a major disaster
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and technological innovation,” he said. While
the progress made by science and technolo-
gy experts in just over a month has provided
strong support to the epidemic prevention
and control, more efforts are needed to seek
solutions through science, he added.
Frontline assistants
Xi has called for accelerating the develop-
ment of new types of test kits, antibody
medicines, vaccines and diagnosis and treat-
ment plans.
Chinese scientists are working to develop
several types of vaccines for the novel coro-
navirus disease (COVID-19) simultaneously,
Zhang Xinmin, Director of the China National
Center for Biotechnology Development un-
der the Ministry of Science and Technology,
said at a press conference on February 15.
Some of these are already being tested on
animals.
At the Tongji Medical College under
the Huazhong University of Science and
Technology in Wuhan in central China, the
epicenter of the outbreak, research on the
diagnosis and treatment of the disease
has been intensified. Antibody test kits
have been developed to detect the virus.
Antibodies are proteins produced in the
blood to fight an alien body like a virus or
bacteria that enters it.
Before the kit was developed, nucleic
acid tests were the most commonly used
tests. But the antibody test kits deliver results
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A community worker checks a delivery robot before it enters a residential area in Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region in north China, on February 7
XINHUA
