Party organized medical personnel, reassured public, provided guidance

The Communist Party of China displayed leadership in not only guiding the country through the deployment of medical personnel and resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also mobilizing the public, said renowned Shanghai doctor Zhang Wenhong.

The leader of the Shanghai team of experts that treated novel coronavirus cases, Zhang said the outbreak witnessed many CPC members acting as role models in the medical field. Their actions included aiding hard-hit Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, supporting designated hospitals treating COVID-19 cases, conducting scientific research and disseminating correct information about the pandemic to reassure the public.

Grassroots CPC members working in neighborhood management, public security, disease prevention and control, and public transportation also contributed to the fight against the spread of the virus in Wuhan, Zhang said.

"When each CPC member does his or her job, the Party will win the support of the people and attract more people to follow suit and contribute to the country," he said at the opening of an exhibition of historic CPC items in Shanghai last month.

Around 40,000 medical workers from across the country were dispatched to aid Wuhan early last year, according to Zhang.

"How did they manage to form a strong team and work with high efficiency in such a swift manner? The answer was establishing Party leadership at each of the medical institutions they worked at in Wuhan when they arrived," he said.

Zhang, who is also Party branch secretary and director of the infectious diseases department at Shanghai's Huashan Hospital Affiliated with Fudan University, became well known on the internet after he said in January last year amid a wave of local infections that he had dispatched doctors and nurses who were CPC members to front-line hospitals to treat COVID-19 cases.

He said at the time: "When we became CPC members, we vowed that we would always prioritize people's interests and press forward in the face of difficulties. This is the moment we live up to the pledge. All CPC members must rush to the front line. No negotiating."

When confronting difficulties, especially extreme ones, people needed a group that can rally the public for actual and spiritual guidance, and the CPC is such a group, he said.

Zhang, who was honored as a national outstanding CPC member, said on a CCTV program that there was no hesitation when he and fellow medical experts, who are also CPC members, had to rush to Shanghai's epidemic control command center in the middle of the night.

He said the first confirmed case of COVID-19 that occurred in late January was a worker at a major Shanghai hospital. As a result, all of the hospital's staff had to return to the hospital, which was placed under a 14-day lockdown. Despite there being close to 7,000 workers at the medical facility, the recall was completed in a matter of hours.

"Nucleic acid tests for those individuals had to be completed that night, and they needed to be categorized into groups according to how likely it was they had come into contact with the confirmed case," he said.

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan last year, Zhang said he was most impressed by the performance of his young colleagues. Many of the nurses were in their 20s.

"They clearly understood that the fatality rate of the disease in Wuhan at that time was 6 percent. But they risked their lives and rushed to the front line without hesitation and dedicated themselves to racing against time to save the patients," he said, adding that some of the young medical workers were already CPC members while some others joined the Party when they were on the front line.