The COVID-19 epidemic in China has largely been controlled by prevention, rather than the antibodies developed in Chinese, the country's top respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan told a press conference on Sunday.
China has now basically brought the outbreak under control in contrast to the situation in some other countries where the disease is still causing havoc.
"Such a contrast will inevitably lead to imported cases and further infection by imported cases," Zhong said.
The country has reduced R0, the average number of new people infected by one contagious person, to about 0.3 percent or 0.4 percent, while that in some countries can be as high as five, or even seven.
The basic containment in China has been achieved by "prevention, rather than depending on the body to produce antibodies," said the expert.
Currently, the vast majority of Chinese people do not have immunity to the novel coronavirus. "What we do is prevention. We are not immune to the virus, and don't develop antibodies actively."
'Very necessary' to test and isolate all travelers entering China
"If we don't test all travelers entering the country and take quarantine measures over the global spread, it will be very difficult to prevent and control the infection from the imported cases from spreading domestically," stressed Zhong. "It's very necessary to conduct nucleic acid testing and quarantine for all the people entering China from abroad."
Zhong told the press that the U.S. will conduct national testing next week to find out that how many people were once infected with the virus, which he said is "necessary but not the first priority."
"What comes first is the prevention and containment," he said.
Immunity not a way out
Zhong stressed that he did not believe that natural immunity could solve the problem. Depending on an individual's immunity to cope with the disease will cost a lot.
The high-level knowledge, technologies and detection of epidemics today should save people from this approach of getting infections first and then becoming immune to the disease.
"I totally disagree with that," said Zhong. "Vaccine is the real solution."
