(Screenshot of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker's tweet about the mask delivery on April 3, 2020.)
A new round of humanitarian actions involving transport of medical materials across the Pacific is rapidly unfolding as the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 300,000 with over 8,400 fatalities.
The recent action that made headlines here was the remarkable delivery of a million N95 masks by a New England Patriots team plane to Boston, Massachusetts from Shenzhen, China.
GRAB-AND-GO
The chartered Boeing 767 flight by the Kraft Group, the owner of football team, landed Thursday in Boston with the much-needed personal protective equipment purchased in Shenzhen, China, on board.
To obtain medical equipment for front-line workers, Charlie Baker, governor of Massachusetts, initiated the idea in late March and worked to make it happen together with the state's COVID-19 Command Center personnel, Patriot owner Robert Kraft, former Massachusetts Republican Chair Gene Hartigan and Dr. Jason Li, executive chairman of U.S.-China Partnership Committee based in Boston, Massachusetts.
It is a joint effort by parties across public and private sectors, said Li, who has long been active in promoting cooperation between the United States and China, in a phone interview with Xinhua on Saturday.
The Chinese Consulate General in New York helped facilitate the visa application process for the pilots and Beijing established a green channel and lost no time in approving the chartered flight, added Li.
Officials in Guangdong province, Massachusetts's sister state in China, offered on-the-spot assistance with customs clearance.
"These efforts enabled the flight to complete the grab-and-go process within only two hours and forty minutes, setting a new record for the (Shenzhen) airport's operation," Li said.
The arrival of "a major shipment of N95 masks" on the Patriots' plane was "a significant step in our work to get front-line workers the equipment they need," tweeted Baker on Thursday.
"And it's an example of how collaboration and partnership can lead to real solutions during these challenging times," he said.
HUMANITARIAN ACTION
The Patriots delivery happened following an important phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on March 27, calling for bilateral anti-epidemic cooperation, said Chinese diplomats here.
A number of Chinese provinces and cities including Jiangsu province and the city of Shanghai as well as companies such as Huawei, Tencent, China Construction America and Bank of China, have donated millions of medical items to hospitals in the United States.
China's Fujian province and Heren Charitable Foundation are coordinating a donation of 1 million masks, 10,000 protective clothing, 10,000 goggles and 10,000 shoe covers to the state of Ohio.
New York state, now the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the nation, got 1,000 ventilators after China facilitated a donation from Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, co-founders of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, governor Andrew Cuomo said Saturday.
"No effort against the coronavirus -- whether to save American lives at home or combat the disease abroad -- will be successful without some degree of cooperation between the United States and China," said a joint statement released Friday by more than 90 bipartisan, former high-ranking government officials and experts, urging cooperation with China to combat COVID-19.
