THE municipal government has allocated 200 million yuan (US$29 million) from the city’s science and technology special fund for this year to support scientific research into various aspects of COVID-19 prevention and control.

This is one of 16 measures that the municipal science and technology innovation commission recently rolled out to help contain the epidemic and address related difficulties faced by the city’s enterprises. The measures will remain effective until Dec. 31 this year.

High-level science research institutes in the city, such as the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory and the Pengcheng Laboratory, will carry out the research. The science authority has also opened the city’s major technology platforms including the National Super Computing Center in Shenzhen, also known as the Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center, to institutions that conduct research on virus traceability, drug screening, COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutic antibodies and testing reagents, free of charge.

A list of equipment available for epidemic prevention and control purposes — including analytical, measuring and diagnostic instruments, among others — has been made public online.

The commission has also set up a citywide unified platform for dispatching the city’s scientific research equipment to institutions in need.

The moves aim at deploying Shenzhen’s scientific and technological advantages in the efforts to eradicate the epidemic, according to the Daily Sunshine.

Apart from these efforts, the science and technology commission addressed specific problems that many enterprises are facing amid the COVID-19 outbreak when formulating the 16 measures.

Non-State-owned enterprises, research institutes and individually owned businesses that rent government properties managed by the science and technology commission will be exempt from two months’ rent.

The commission will double the annual budget for science and technology innovation vouchers to support the development of the city’s small- and medium-sized high-tech firms.

Jointly set up by the Shenzhen government and the Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory is a provincial-level research center that specializes in bioinformatics and biomedicine.

The Pengcheng Laboratory is also a provincial-level research institute that has established partnerships with renowned universities including Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) and Tsinghua University Graduate School at Shenzhen, as well as high-tech firms in the city, to focus on high technology involving the Internet and artificial intelligence (AI).

(Wei Jie)