Editor's Note: The following article is taken from the Chinese-language opinion column "The Real Point".

China, after managing the epidemic at home, is coming out to help other countries affected by the virus.

A team of seven Chinese medical experts, bringing medical supplies, including face masks and protective outfits, has been dispatched to Italy to help with the country's fight against its COVID-19 outbreaks. The Chinese government pledged on Wednesday to help several countries deal with the disease by providing expertise and resources. In an op-ed by Italy's permanent representative to the EU, Maurizio Massari wrote that while the EU had ignored Italy's requests for aid, "Only China responded bilaterally."

Chinese medical experts shared the genetic sequence of the virus with the World Health Organization in the earliest phase of the outbreak and supplied updates on the situation in China to other countries and regions. They have also held video conferences with their counterparts in such blocs as the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the African Union, providing updates on the diagnosis and treatment plan, as well as approaches to epidemic prevention and control in multiple languages.

Other efforts include financial donations to the WHO to support its work carrying out international cooperation, donation of urgently needed resources and equipment, and cooperation with other countries in developing medicines, vaccines and test kits.

The efforts China has undertaken are aimed at returning the favor offered by the international community when the country faced the toughest moment in fighting the outbreak. They are also intended to safeguard global health security, as all nations make up a community with a shared future and destiny.

Such concerted efforts and international cooperation are important, especially at a time when the virus is spreading rapidly across the world.

On Wednesday, the WHO officially declared the COVID-19 disease to be a pandemic, predicting that the number of confirmed cases, deaths, and the number of affected countries and regions will continue to rise in the coming weeks. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a message on that same day, saying the new pandemic phase is "a call for responsibility and solidarity—as nations united, and as people united." WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that all countries can still change the course of this pandemic if they "detect, test, treat, isolate, trace, and mobilize their people in their response". He added, "Countries must take a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach, built around a comprehensive strategy to prevent infections, save lives and minimize impact."

The suggestions, some repeated by the WHO since the outbreak, have not been warmly received by some governments.

In the United States, the window of opportunity, which the WHO said China had created for the rest of the world to contain the virus, is narrowing or being missed because of finger pointing and buck passing among politicians, as well as underestimating the impact of the virus. As international efforts combating the disease approached a critical stage, news emerged that the Trump administration had even proposed halving its WHO funding in its 2021 budget proposal.

On Wednesday, Washington announced travel restrictions, banning entry to visitors from most European countries for a month. President Donald Trump blamed the EU for not acting fast enough to address the "foreign virus" and claimed that "a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe."

Scapegoating is not the solution to the problem. The epidemic is a common enemy of mankind and requires the international community to respond in unity. China's anti-epidemic practice has demonstrated that the spread of the virus can be contained. But as WHO senior adviser Dr. Bruce Aylward pointed out, the key is "all about speed."

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