China Awards Four Covid-19 Fighters and Confers Dr. Zhong Nanshan the Medal of the Republic

China held a ceremony on Sept. 7 to honor role models in the country’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Zhong Nanshan was granted the highest state honor, the Medal of the Republic. He is a senior respiratory disease expert who identified the SARS virus in 2003 and was appointed as the leader of the high-profile expert group of the National Health Commission, shaping the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Three other medical experts, including Zhang Boli, Zhang Dingyu, and Chen Wei, were bestowed with the national honorary title, “People’s Hero.”

Zhang Boli, deputy secretary of the Party Committee and president of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, has long been committed to the modernization of Chinese medicine, laying the foundation for the standardization of quality education and international education of Chinese medicine.

After the COVID-19 outbreak, he presided over the research and formulation of a treatment plan for integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine and guided the whole process of Chinese medicine intervention in the treatment of coronavirus.

Zhang Dingyu, deputy director of the Health Commission of Hubei Province and head of Wuhan’s designated coronavirus-treating Jinyintan Hospital, has been working in the medical frontline for a long time.

On Dec. 29, 2019, after receiving the first batch of 7 patients with an unknown virus infection, he immediately established an isolation ward, took the lead in collecting samples for virus testing, and organized the mobilization of people donating their bodies to science.

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As a patient with frostbite, he charged ahead and led the staff of Jinyintan Hospital to treat more than 2,800 patients with coronavirus infection.

Chen Wei, director, and researcher of the Institute of Bioengineering, Academy of Military Medicine, Academy of Military Sciences, has been committed to the research of biological hazard prevention and control for a long time.

After the outbreak of the coronavirus, she rushed to Wuhan to carry out scientific research and prevention and control tasks and achieved significant results in basic research, vaccines, and protective drug development.