IT may have a history spanning thousands of years, but that has not stopped experts praising the role Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has played in the fight against COVID-19.

At the World Congress of Chinese Medicine currently taking place in Changchun, in northeastern China’s Jilin Province, people from around the world learned about how TCM is being applied to treat the virus.

“What we did in Wuhan was to focus on keeping up the patients’ immune system by taking a TCM herbal formula, and the results showed that the risk of getting seriously ill was significantly reduced,” said Zhang Boli, a member from Chinese Academy of Engineering.

For the first time, the World Health Organization added TCM therapies to its global diagnostic compendium. Though many of the remedies in TCM have been used for thousands of years, some argue there’s no scientific evidence to support TCM’s benefits in treating the coronavirus.

“The way TCM works to treat the COVID-19 is different from the way Western people are thinking. In Chinese medicine we don’t try to kill the virus, we are focusing on people. More than 75,000 patients have been treated by TCM, we’ve seen more than 92 percent of clinical efficiency,” said professor Diarra Boubacar, a foreign expert in TCM.

With around 300 people infected since the Delta variant was first reported in Nanjing, experts at the summit also discussed whether the vaccines as well as the clinical efficiency of TCM remedies are working against the Delta variant.

“Based on our experience in Guangdong and Yunnan, combined treatment using Western and TCM has shown promising results in face of the Delta variant. I think the Nanjing outbreak can be brought down under control soon,” said Zhang.

(CGTN)