On the early morning of Jan. 18, after receiving instruction from the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council, West China Hospital immediately launched an emergency protocol and completed the staffing and material mobilization within two hours. At 7: 30am, the medical team was ready to set out for Hebei Province and will work at Shijiazhuang Municipal People’s Hospital.

The team is composed of 61 medical workers, including 20 doctors and 41 nurses, 60% of whom come from the Department of Critical Care Medicine, in addition to those from the Department of Cardiology, Department of Nephrology, Department of Respiratory and Critical Care and Department of Neurology. All members have rich experience in the treatment of COVID-19, especially for critical patients. Among them, 34 team members had aided in Hubei Province and 9 in Chengdu Public Health Clinical Center.

Before this team, WCH had sent two experts to help hospitals and patients in Hebei Province and Jilin Province. On the morning of Jan. 12, Kang Yan, President of West China Tianfu Hospital and professor of Critical Care Medicine, headed to Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, to aid in the treatment of critical COVID-19 patients. On Jan. 17, Qiao Fu, a hospital prevention and control expert, was dispatched to Jilin Province to assist local hospitals in the prevention and control of COVID-19.