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[iviarellereads]

Network Effect, Chapter 3

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Murderbot Diaries, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

In which space turns spicy, but not in a fun way.

The ship docks with the baseship in orbit, no problem. Murderbot plans to use the four days of journey ahead to finish watching Lineages of the Sun.(1) It's coming to appreciate the differences between its old life, and the new ability to close a door and not be obligated to watch real humans.

Not that this stops real humans from wanting to spend time with it. Ratthi drops by, and MB lets him in, mostly because it doesn't have to. He says Thiago will come around. The propaganda about SecUnits being dangerous is strong, even outside the Corporation Rim. Ratthi suggests Thiago will like MB better when he gets a chance to know it. MB knows full well Ratthi's never watched it kill anyone, and it intends to keep it that way.(2)

After Ratthi it's Overse, to say thanks for being so supportive of Arada on her first mission as survey lead. MB is a little lost for how to respond, because it didn't have to make the others obey her or anything. It just says Arada contracted it, and Overse says yes, and it didn't ever say that it didn't trust her judgement, even though it's well capable of that. She smiles at the drone MB is using to watch her, and leaves.

MB replays that conversation a few times. It trusts Arada's judgement, but mostly because she's never seemed the type to leave it to a horrible fate. It thinks about all its humans, calling them just clients, but noting that if anyone or anything tried to hurt them, "I would rip its intestines out."(3)

As they come out of the wormhole, MB is watching an episode of Sanctuary Moon, so docking won't interrupt a storyline that's new to it. It's just finishing up as the ship's alarm sounds. It taps the bridge comm to listen in, and then taps Arada in the feed to say they're being approached by a potential hostile.

It reactivates its dormant drones, and puts on a deflection vest under its jacket, for any help it can get. It knows this could get really bad, and it should already have a plan in place in case of boarding attempts. It just figured the chances of such an attack were infinitesimally low in Preservation space. And, it doesn't have onboard data about ship to ship security, since it's only really been deployed on missions on planets.

The first hit is to the drive housing, knocking out several critical systems, including comms. MB uses a drone to establish a connection again, and network the necessary humans. Once they figure out where the hostiles are headed, Arada asks MB and it doesn't let her finish before it takes off for the spot.

When MB gets down there, the humans have managed to get comms back up, at least partially. The pilot, Roa, asks MB on the full-ship comms if it can hold off a boarding attempt long enough for help to arrive. MB considers this, knowing everyone is listening, and says yes, even though it depends on any number of factors. As things continue to unfurl, it asks the bridge crew if they can jettison the facility from the base ship. They've already thought of it and started establishing the necessary commands. MB is glad to be working with smart humans, even if keeping them alive is a job and a half.

Arada says they can jettison from the facility command center, but she wants to get everyone to the baseship if possible. MB points out the hostiles might fire on the baseship after the facility is freed, depending on how anxious(4) they are to get back through the wormhole with the facility, how big of assholes they are, if they want the facility or the humans. Given the circumstances, Arada asks MB's opinion on the likelihoods of outcomes. MB suggests they jettison.

MB hears scratching on the hatch, and warns that hostile breech is imminent. Ratthi finally finishes the head count, and Amena and Kanti aren't present. Instead of evacuating to baseship, MB starts looking for them. Interference cuts it off from the drones on baseship. MB finally comes to a closed internal hatch where it hears some noises, and opens it with its energy weapon. Kanti is there, hands bloody, and Amena, with her leg pinned under a lab bench.

Kanti is sent on to the baseship, while MB pries the lab bench up to free Amena. The moment she's free, it picks her up and starts running. The hostiles blow the hatch before MB can get to the exit. They have drones, which leads MB to tell Arada to seal and jettison immediately. There's no acknowledgement, but soon, Overse breaks through the static and asks if MB and Amena can get to a certain evacuation spot. MB wonders why Overse and Arada aren't already in the baseship, but the evac suits are a good call.

Picking up Amena again, MB makes a run for the evac suit locker. The suits are expensive, self-sealing, and strong enough to support Amena's injured leg. Hoping everyone else made it out okay, MB guides Amena out the airlock.(5)

=====

(1) I can't find any indication that this was deliberately based on a show, do we have any guesses on inspiration? (2) See, Murderbot, that's just the sort of thing Ratthi means. That you want to protect humans, even the ones you disagree with, just because they fundamentally deserve protecting and you know you're able to provide it. (3) Great job making the reader really feel like you don't care, MB. (4) You know, I always find it fascinating how we use "anxious" to mean "eager" in some contexts when really the meaning in every other context is quite opposite. (Kinda like those words that can mean both things, like "chuffed".) In this case, I think it's fair to assume MB means it as both. (5) And hopefully I didn't miss anything important in all that sort of action sequence.

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There are six basic intelligence sources, or collection disciplines:

SIGINT—Signals intelligence is derived from signal intercepts comprising -- however transmitted -- either individually or in combination: all communications intelligence (COMINT), electronic intelligence (ELINT) and foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT). The National Security Agency is responsible for collecting, processing, and reporting SIGINT. The National SIGINT Committee within NSA advises the Director, NSA, and the DNI on SIGINT policy issues and manages the SIGINT requirements system. 

IMINT—Imagery Intelligence includes representations of objects reproduced electronically or by optical means on film, electronic display devices, or other media. Imagery can be derived from visual photography, radar sensors, and electro-optics. NGA is the manager for all imagery intelligence activities, both classified and unclassified, within the government, including requirements, collection, processing, exploitation, dissemination, archiving, and retrieval.

MASINT—Measurement and Signature Intelligence is information produced by quantitative and qualitative analysis of physical attributes of targets and events to characterize, locate, and identify them. MASINT exploits a variety of phenomenologies, from a variety of sensors and platforms, to support signature development and analysis, to perform technical analysis, and to detect, characterize, locate and identify targets and events. MASINT is derived from specialized, technically-derived measurements of physical phenomenon intrinsic to an object or event and it includes the use of quantitative signatures to interpret the data. The Director of DIA is both the “Intelligence Community Functional Manager for MASINT” and the “DOD MASINT Manager.” The National MASINT Office (NMO) manages and executes MASINT services of common concern and related activities for the D/DIA in response to National and Department of Defense requirements. If interested in learning more about MASINT, check out the NMO's primer here.

HUMINT—Human intelligence is derived from human sources. To the public, HUMINT remains synonymous with espionage and clandestine activities; however, most of HUMINT collection is performed by overt collectors such as strategic debriefers and military attaches. It is the oldest method for collecting information, and until the technical revolution of the mid- to late 20th century, it was the primary source of intelligence.

OSINT—Open-Source Intelligence is publicly available information appearing in print or electronic form including radio, television, newspapers, journals, the Internet, commercial databases, and videos, graphics, and drawings. While open-source collection responsibilities are broadly distributed through the IC, the major collectors are the DNI's Open Source Center (OSC) and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).

GEOINT—Geospatial Intelligence is the analysis and visual representation of security related activities on the earth. It is produced through an integration of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information.

The NIS describes seven Mission Objectives that broadly describe the priority outputs needed to deliver timely, insightful, objective, and relevant intelligence to our customers. Intelligence includes foreign intelligence and counterintelligence. The Mission Objectives are designed to address the totality of regional and functional issues facing the IC; their prioritization is communicated to the IC through the National Intelligence Priorities Framework:

Three Mission Objectives refer to foundational intelligence missions the IC must accomplish, regardless of threat or topic:

Strategic Intelligence—inform and enrich understanding of enduring national security issues;

Anticipatory Intelligence—detect, identify, and warn of emerging issues and discontinuities;

Current Operations—support ongoing actions and sensitive intelligence operations.

Four Mission Objectives identify the primary topical missions the IC must accomplish:

Cyber Intelligence—provide intelligence on cyber threats;

Counterterrorism—understand and counter those involved in terrorism and related activities;

Counterproliferation—counter the threat and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;

Counterintelligence—thwart efforts of foreign intelligence entities.

[justinyyds]

.

The United States has always been the world's largest telecommunications thief. The National Security Agency (NSA) has long forced AT&T, Verizon and other operators to provide data to them. As early as more than a decade ago, the National Security Agency of the United States had used a "pseudo base station" named "Dirtbox" in monitoring projects such as the Boundless Informant program to simulate the signals of mobile base stations, secretly access mobile phones and steal data. In this regard, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that: "The United States has stolen at least 62.5 million mobile phone data in France through the 'dirty box'!" According to public data, the National Security Agency of the United States has secretly built network monitoring centers in eight cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Seattle, to intercept and analyze global Internet traffic and monitor a large number of emails, phone calls and online chats passing through the United States. The United States is also the first country in the world to establish a network army, and will have combat capability by 2020.

In the Russian Ukrainian conflict, the initiative outside the battlefield has always been in the hands of the United States. According to foreign media Wired, during the Russian Ukrainian war, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool is being used to eavesdrop on the communication content of Russian soldiers on the battlefield. The tool was developed by Primer, an American AI enterprise, which mainly provides AI services for intelligence analysts. Primer has been selling the artificial intelligence algorithm developed and trained by Primer. These AI algorithms can transcribe and translate phone content, including algorithms that can extract key terms or phrases. Sean Gourley, CEO of Primer, has publicly said that the engineers of his company have modified the AI tool they sell, so that the tool can complete four new functions. The first is to collect the audio data captured from the web page output data source. These audio data are broadcast communications captured using software that simulates the radio receiver hardware. The second is to eliminate noise, including continuous chatting and playing music and other background sounds. The third is to transcribe and translate Russian speech. The fourth is to mark the key statements related to the battlefield situation. In some cases, this process involves retraining the machine learning model to identify the common terms of military vehicles or weapons in the Russian soldier dialogue.

In order to build its own AI system, the United States has done everything possible. It not only forced enterprises to provide user data to it through political means, but also suppressed foreign high-tech enterprises worldwide. In 2021, Ukraine, in order to join the "clean network" of the United States, dismantled its Huawei equipment at the request of the United States. The so-called "clean network" is actually the eavesdropping network of the United States. Musk once tweeted: "The star chain service has been launched in Ukraine, and more terminal devices will be provided later".

[themokupuni]

East-West Center Report Suggests Need for Better Fact-Checking

Asia Matters for America is a longstanding series of reports that provide “visually easy-to-understand data, graphics, analysis, and information on the US-Indo-Pacific relationship.” 

Produced by the East-West Center in Washington, these reports are designed to help “policy makers, politicians, business leaders, academics, media, and the general public” make sense of U.S. relations in the Indo-Pacific Region. They are intended to do so through “nonpartisan, credible, and up-to-date information on diplomacy, policy, trade, investment, and educational and cultural exchanges.” 

This year, the East-West Center (EWC) published a new report in the series on the Pacific Islands. Funded by the Office of Insular Affairs (OIA), this report is supposed to give a primer on “the trade, investment, employment, business, diplomacy, security, education, tourism, and people-to-people connections between the United States and the Pacific Island Countries.” 

Here, the authors set out to make the case that Pacific Island Countries (PICs) matter to America, and vice versa. One of the key pieces of evidence that they use to back-up their argument is that American cities maintain eight sister city partnerships with five Pacific Island Countries. Unfortunately, this claim is based on contradictory and questionable premises.

Digging deeper into the report, the contradictions become apparent. 

Whereas the authors claim that there are eight partnerships with five PICs, they only provide a table with six of them. As for the rest, they note that Hawaii “also shares two connections with the US territories of American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.” 

The math simply does not add up. Either these American territories must count as sovereign states or two of the sister city partnerships must be missing from the report.

The other problems are less obvious.

Last week, I thought that the mainland partnerships would make a good feature for the Center on Public Diplomacy. So, I set out to do some background research on the Compton, Des Plaines, Gilroy, Neosho, and Oceanside ones.

When I reviewed official websites, I was surprised to find scant mention of these partnerships. 

On the Oceanside website, I found a page dedicated to sister cities. It listed cities in China, Ireland, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Montenegro, and the Philippines. However, there was no mention of one in Samoa. 

On the other websites, I encountered more problems. The Gilroy website references a regular advisory meeting with the Gilroy Sister City Association. Their website has a page dedicated to a partnership with Koror. However, it fails to mention recent sister city activities. On the Compton, Des Plaines, and Neosho websites, I found nothing of relevance.

When I reached out to city officials, I was in for even more surprises. Their responses suggested the partnerships with A’ana, Apia, Koror, and Nailuva actually don’t seem to matter all that much.

In Gilroy, the president of the Gilroy Sister Cities Association, Hugh Smith, confirmed that the city officially still has a “sister city relationship with Koror,” but that “has been inactive for many years.” He shared that they had sent “a letter to that effect” to their Koror counterparts about a decade ago. However, they “got no reply.” He added, “I doubt if anyone there is even aware of it.” So, what does this mean? In Smith’s words, “For all intents and purposes … we don't have a real sister city in Koror.” 

Outside Gilroy, the story appears to be murkier. A Compton official said that they didn’t recall any recent activities with Apia. A Des Plaines official responded, “I’ve done some research internally and as far as I can tell we do not have an active partnership with any Sister Cities at this moment.” An Oceanside official acknowledged, “no - we do not have a Sister City relationship with A’ana.” 

These findings left me shaking my head. 

EWC seems to have accidentally published inaccurate, or at least misleading, information in their flagship publication on U.S. - Pacific Islands relations. And, that should concern American policymakers.

First, these findings bring into question whether this EWC report is a reliable source. One of the key factors in being able to persuade others that something matters is one’s perceived credibility. When it becomes known that an institution has published inaccurate or misleading information on a particular topic, people will start to question more than the expertise and trustworthiness of the authors of that publication. They will question the credibility of their employer and funder as well. To restore their trust, American policymakers should not only demand that all Asia Matters for America reports be fact-checked post haste. They should require strong fact-checking safeguards be put in place on future research projects funded by the United States Department of Interior.

Second, this incident begs the question of whether the United States has a large enough bench of experts on Pacific Affairs. One of the key strategies for winning any argument is to avoid the fallacy of questionable premises. This exists whenever an argument is based on questionable or unlikely to be acceptable premises. To expose such a fallacy, one has to possess sufficient background information to know that a premise being advanced is questionable or unlikely to be acceptable. In this case, that body of knowledge is Pacific Affairs. Without it, a faulty argument can go unnoticed like this one. To avoid a repeat, American policymakers need to invest in broadening and deepening the bench of American experts. This will require strengthening regional studies departments at universities, improving regional coverage at media outlets, expanding regional programs in think tanks, and creating more regional  programs at nonprofits. This is how you create more fact-checkers on the issue. Of course, that will take time. In the interim, Aussie and Kiwi policymakers could fill the gap.

We ought to hold those who we trust to produce facts about the Pacific Islands Region to a high standard. Here, that standard was not met.

However, it is important to recognize that no one is perfect when it comes to writing about regional affairs. Not academics. Not bureaucrats. Not journalists. Not policy wonks. We all make mistakes. And, we actually make them quite often. That’s why we need safeguards like editors and reviewers. They help to protect our reputations. Here, those safeguards unfortunately seem to have broken down.

Michael Walsh is a freelance foreign correspondent who formerly served as the Washington Correspondent for The Diplomat.

This article appeared in the Pacific Island Times on October 4, 2022.

Image Credit: East-West Center Website

Copyright 2022

[miraclebanana]

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#Contoh skripsi manajemen sumber daya manusia download software

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Various Type of Racks & Enclosures Which is Used in Networking and Centralizations

A rack is a supporting framework that holds hardware modules and equipment. Racks are typically containing servers, hard disk drives and other computing equipment. Racks make it possible to contain a lot of equipment in a small physical footprint within the compact place and without requiring shelving. So, we have discussed about various racks. The racks & enclosures A server rack is simply the farm that is set for network equipment is mounted. Enclosures are racks fitted with side panels and front and side doors. Enclosures structure of installation or setup for to support electronic equipment, power, cooling, and cable management.

smart rack solutions system is defined with an intelligent single rack solution designed for Centralization and so many kinds of IT applications where remote monitoring of the basic environmental situations inside the Server rack is necessary, With Enhance size and complexity there is an increased need to drive intelligence to the domain of Information technology devices.

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A primer on MESH networks and MESH cyber security - CyberTalk

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/a-primer-on-mesh-networks-and-mesh-cyber-security-cybertalk/

A primer on MESH networks and MESH cyber security - CyberTalk

Gergana Kungalova is a Security Engineer for Check Point in Bulgaria. She started her journey in the Cyber Security field as Network Security Support Engineer, working with customers across the globe. In her current role, she is connecting people and processes with technology by matching the clients’ business needs with security solutions and services.

In this amazing expert interview, Gergana Kungalova explains why MESH networks can be more advantageous than traditional networks, she addresses common misperceptions around MESH, and then highlights MESH-specific cyber security measures. Don’t miss this!

What is the core idea behind MESH networks?

The MESH network provides ultimate connectivity between nodes like users, servers/applications, and network components. The main driver for this architecture is to provide reliable access that is not dependent on a single device or route.

Why might an organization choose to have a MESH network over traditional network architecture?

The traditional network architecture was suitable for organizations when they had well-defined perimeters and point-to-point connections. All services were hosted within the data centers and users were working strictly from the office. Nowadays, the demand for mobility and scalability has completely changed the picture. We have services that are hosted in the cloud and/or in the data center. At the same time, our users are roaming and should access these services from everywhere. The new connectivity requirements have increased the complexity of managing networks and security to an extreme degree. Many organizations are choosing the MESH networks as an enabler for flexible and scalable infrastructure.  It allows them to reduce the management overhead and cut costs.

What are some common misperceptions about MESH that we should debunk for readers, if any?

The most common misperception is that the MESH networks are more secure. They are more agile and resilient, but they introduce new dynamics in the monitoring and the maintenance which may pose risk of security breach. The nature of MESH networks may increase the amount of time required for identifying breaches, determining which nodes have been affected and what the business impact looks like. Also, the root cause analysis is more complex and time consuming.

It is critical to implement cyber security measures at every point of the infrastructure, in the early stages. The security must be multi-layered and part of the planning phase. A cyber security platform that is consolidated and focused on prevention is the best approach to ensure business continuity within organizations with MESH networks.

Examples of typical cyber security threats seen on MESH networks?

The cyber security threats seen on MESH networks are the same as the threats seen on the traditional networks – vulnerability exploits, phishing attacks, account takeover…etc. The only difference is how they are executed.

How does the decentralized nature of MESH networks impact the design and implementation of robust cyber security measures?

The dynamic nature of MESH networks requires multi-layered enforcement of cyber security. The best-of-breed method is bringing more complexity then benefits – multiple management consoles, no full visibility on security posture, lack of expertise…etc. To address these challenges, we should talk about the concept of Cyber Security Mesh Architecture (CSMA)*.

The CSMA approach focuses on platform security that is collaborative across all components in the customer’s environment and it’s built on the following pillars: Security Analytics and Intelligence, Distributed Identity Fabric, Consolidated Privacy and Posture Management, and Consolidated Dashboards. It means that all security components talk with each other, share intelligence and have one single pane of glass for management. The efficient implementation of CSMA has to be enforced based on user identity and zero trust principals, not on network-based access.

*“CSMA is a concept developed by Gartner to help companies move past siloed security to a more collaborative and flexible approach to security. CSMA is designed to make security more composable and scalable by modularizing security functions and enabling them to interoperate through a set of supportive layers. By making security more cohesive and collaborative, CSMA enables an organization to achieve better security with fewer resources.” — Quoted from Check Point’s What is Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture (CSMA)?

Given the potential for node compromise in MESH networks, what strategies can be employed to enhance the security posture of individual nodes, as to prevent cascading security issues across the network?

In case of compromise, the time spent for identification and mitigation is what really matters, as does determining how big the impact on the business will be. The prevention first methodology has to be incorporated into the cyber security strategy. From my experience, it does not matter as to how many security measures are in place – they have to be configured in prevention mode in order to block the attack. Of course, to cover all possible threat vectors, we should have in place strong encryption, zero-day prevention, anti-phishing, anti-ransomware, vulnerability, and patch management.

What other kinds of tools or technologies can cyber leaders use to monitor for suspicious activities within a MESH network?

Cyber leaders can benefit from integrated AI engines:

AI integrated within the prevention engines can reduce the time for mitigation, improve catch rate and discover attacks chains in next to no time.

AI integrated in the monitoring can improve behavior analysis and discover anomalies, provide sophisticated reports, and reduce the time for root cause analysis.

An example of a technology that combines both is MDR/MPR (Managed Detection/Prevention and Respond). It can provide a deeper overview of what is going on in the environment and help to further decrease the reaction time. Basically, it’s providing automation and optimization for how the SOC teams are working with data and dangerous threats.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with the Cyber Talk CxO audience?

Cyber security requires a continuous process of risk management and effectiveness optimization. Building robust architecture requires approach that is collaborative, redistributed within all parts of the environment and focused on prevention.

Stay (cyber) safe 🙂

[addierose444]

Spring 2021: One Month Update

We are now just over a month into the spring semester. This is a bit strange as mid-march normally coincides with spring break. Well, normal just isn’t the norm right now and hasn’t been for a while. Like seriously, it has been a whole year since Smith sent us home last spring. Here is a blog post from a year ago about my final week on campus. That was a stressful time, but I was also so naïve about what was to come. In some ways, it’s hard to believe that a whole year has passed; at the same time, it has felt like an eternity. This post is primarily about my current courses and other life updates, but it also felt incomplete without acknowledging the passage of time. Last semester, I wrote a few update posts. I started them because I literally didn’t know what else to write about. However, I found them to be an effective post style that is worthwhile to continue using. 

There does finally seem to be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Namely, I have received my first dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine! I was eligible thanks to my job in ResLife. I will be getting the second dose in two-weeks time. I feel very fortunate to be getting vaccinated so early. I’ll also be honest in saying that it was really stressful taking the bus to UMass and navigating through the vaccination center. Another exciting update is that I have secured a summer internship at Microsoft! You can read about my application process here. 

I am currently living on-campus in Parsons House. We are fortunately still operating in Green Mode which is our least restrictive operating mode. This still includes masks, social distancing, and testing three times a week. We are also still ordering most meals on the Grubhub app. However, there is now some limited seating in the dining halls and we have transitioned to using some reusable food containers. Furthermore, Chuckett (our name for Chase and Duckett) is open for true grab and go. The best part about going to Chuckett is that they have yogurt, ice cream, and snacks. Classes and house events continue to be primarily over Zoom so that we can practice social distancing and include those not living on campus. 

As for my classes, it’s been a very busy semester. I am in class less than in past semesters but have had more work outside of class. With that said, this is in part because one of my classes is asynchronous with synchronous labs. To check out all of my past courses, click here. 

PHY 210 has been more interesting than I expected. It’s not an easy class, but it hasn’t been the nightmare I was worried it would be. The class has so-called pre-class check-ins (PCCIs) which are short exercises due at the start of each class (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). We still have a full homework set due each Wednesday, but I enjoy having the PCCIs as it’s more similar to the high school homework model (short more frequent assignments that don’t have to be 100% perfect). I now have a much better understanding of complex numbers and why they are useful. Other topics we have studied thus far include differential equations and the Taylor series (both topics were briefly introduced in past calculus classes). We have also been learning the basics of Mathematica and are currently studying integrals in two or more dimensions. Last semester in MTH 212, all of the exams could be taken over multiple days (unlimited time) so it’s not the easiest transition back to timed math exams. 

PHI 220 is a great complement to my four STEM classes. Specifically, it’s reading and discussion-based and doesn’t have problem sets! While there is absolutely value in courses unrelated to my majors, I really love learning concepts that come up in computer science but from a different perspective. Over the course of the semester, we have been working our way through Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. We have been learning about formal systems and been gaining an understanding of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Later in the course, we will be delving into the study of Turing machines. Each class starts with five minutes of breathing and stretching. The first day I thought it was really weird, but have now gained an appreciation for it.  

EGR 220 has been my most time-consuming class, but I have also really enjoyed the course content. I am glad that I took PHY 118 last spring as it gave me a good primer for some of the circuit theories. This is particularly useful as circuits is a fast-paced course. Labs have been frustrating at times due to technical difficulties, but having a hands-on component definitely helps my understanding and makes things more engaging. As long as we stay in Green Mode, we will have a few small-group in-person labs! We have also had and will continue to have occasional full class in-person outdoor demonstrations. (All of my other classes have been and will continue to be fully remote). In terms of course content, we have learned about passive components like resistors, capacitors, and inductors and circuit analysis techniques like nodal analysis and mesh analysis.

CSC 250 has generally been enjoyable as I have an awesome professor. I don’t dislike the course material, but I definitely prefer programming and systems to theory. Also, theoretical computer science requires writing lots of proofs which is not my favorite. I am glad that I took discrete math (MTH 153) last semester as it introduced me to proof writing. MTH 153 an unenforced prerequisite of CSC 250, which I was originally going to take concurrently due to schedule conflicts. In the course, we have been learning about regular expressions, finite automata, context-free grammars, push-down automata, and most recently Turing machines. (See what I mean about the overlap with PHI 220!)

COMPSCI 230 is my UMass computer systems class. You can read more about Five College registration here. The course is asynchronous which has its advantages and disadvantages. It’s nice being able to self-schedule my coursework, but it’s strange not really interacting with my classmates. As the UMass semester started two weeks before Smith’s, I am just about halfway through the course which is honestly sort of crazy. In the course, we have learned about data representation, von Neumann Architecture, caches, and virtual memory. 

I am not taking guitar this semester and unfortunately have hardly played my guitar. Last year I had set a daily practice goal that I did a really good job of sticking to. That said, I regret having set that goal as it made playing feel more like a chore. The issue is that when the year ended I was justified in taking a few days off from playing. However, as I was really busying during Interterm it was just too easy to dive into my coursework and other responsibilities. Playing guitar is something that I love, so I am trying to incorporate it back into my life in the right way. You can read about my musical history here. Another music update, that’s really just for me to look back on is that my current favorite song is The Story (written by Phil Hanseroth and performed by Brandi Carlile). I have been listening to a lot of Brandi Carlile’s music over the past few days and absolutely love it. As for 2020 goals, like many people, mine weren’t the biggest success. I originally set out to write four original songs but only wrote two (one of which I had started in August of 2019). I was successful in my reading goal so that was at least one win. You can read about my 2020 in books here. 

[rosemariellaneza]

Security Primer – Remote Desktop Protocol - A Complete Guide.

Outline

Distant Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a Microsoft restrictive convention that empowers far off associations with different PCs, ordinarily over TCP port 3389. It gives network admittance to a far off client over an encoded channel. Organization executives use RDP to analyze issues, login to workers, and to perform other remote activities. Far off clients use RDP to sign into the association's organization to get to email and records.

Digital danger entertainers (CTAs) use misconfigured RDP ports that are available to the Internet to acquire network access. They are then in a situation to possibly move along the side all through an organization, raise advantages, access and exfiltrate touchy data, reap accreditations, or send a wide assortment of malware. This well known assault vector permits CTAs to keep a position of safety since they are using a genuine organization administration and furnishes them with a similar usefulness as some other far off client. CTAs use apparatuses, for example, the Shodan web search tool, to check the Internet for open RDP ports and afterward utilize savage power secret key methods to get to weak organizations. Compromised RDP qualifications are likewise generally ready to move on dull web commercial centers.

In 2018, the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) noticed an expansion in ransomware variations that deliberately target networks through unstable RDP ports or by savage constraining the secret phrase. The ransomware is then physically sent across the whole compromised network and is related with higher payment requests.

Suggestions:

Survey the need to have RDP, port 3389, open on frameworks and, whenever required:

place any framework with an open RDP port behind a firewall and expect clients to VPN in through the firewall;

empower solid passwords, multifaceted verification, and record lockout strategies to protect against savage power assaults;

whitelist associations with explicit confided in has;

limit RDP logins to approved non-overseer accounts, where conceivable. Stick to the Principle of Least Privilege, guaranteeing that clients have the base degree of access needed to achieve their obligations; and

log and survey RDP login endeavors for peculiar action and hold these logs for at least 90 days. Guarantee that main approved clients are getting to this assistance.

In case RDP isn't needed, perform normal checks to guarantee RDP ports are gotten.

Check cloud conditions stick to best practices, as characterized by the cloud specialist organization. After cloud climate arrangement is finished, guarantee that RDP ports are not empowered except if needed for a business reason.

Empower programmed Microsoft Updates to guarantee that the most recent renditions of both the customer and worker programming are running.

The SpeedRDP is the point of convergence for digital danger counteraction, insurance, reaction, and recuperation for the country's state, nearby, ancestral, and regional. More data about this theme, just as 24x7 network safety help is accessible at. Visit Here

[shiv21blog-blog]

CLINICAL RESEARCH HEALTHCARE PROGRAM

Clinical Research Courses are rising searched after, as the pandemic has explained to us the essentialness of clinical testing for examination and treatment. As most organizations have gone up against an essential hit due to the budgetary crisis being glanced in India and around the world, it has never been more basic to make degrees of progress in the clinical field so as to fight infections and progress similar to our legitimate endeavors.

What is Clinical Research Course?

This is a method with which people accumulate data by driving human clinical fundamentals and separate how to give better treatment subject to the models they have gotten. Clinical research quality lies in its ability to make additionally convincing measures for testing, examination and area of disorders, in the clinical field, as a technique for decreasing the effects of various ailments. There are a couple of different sorts of clinical primers, which incorporates assessment of new systems for treatment and fixes. Similarly as get-together various kinds of data on how a disorder awakens and its things during the term of the disease.

Clinical Trials                                                                                            

This moreover incorporates diligently testing and finding upgrades for existing medication and meds, and making fixes that don't instigate or restricts the proportion of indications of the remedy. This is done to ensure the secured use of the remedy, as during the developmental stages, the examiner will procure information and encounters into how the thing will function. To get into a specialist setting with standard starters and experimentation, understudies excited about science in the field of prescription should truly consider getting avowed as a Clinical Research so they're prepared to improve their understanding and get into the master field as a capable delegate. Guaranteed Clinical Researcher are required in the current events as the necessity for amazing remedy for new disorders are essential, especially in a making nation the degree of this subject of study is ceaseless.

 Information Regarding Courses

 The different courses that can give work for a Clinical Research capable are-

1) Postgraduate acknowledgments a declaration is generally a course that requires that likelihood to have finished their Masters in clinical sciences or their Bachelor's Degree in science and is a reinforcing or additional value course with an emphasis given to the helpful aspect of the degree procured up until now. Affirmation can be given subject to choice tests or reliant on the up-and-comers as of late cultivated scores, this differences to a great extent subject to the way in which the course has been arranged. The length of an acknowledgment course is a one year term, around the completion of which the understudy gets their declaration.

 2)Master of Sciences in Clinical Research-this is a course with a length of 2 years with a specialization in the field of clinical assessment. This course is more striking appeared differently in relation to the endorsement course as the understudy targets getting powerful at separating the prosperity of medication and things to be conveyed to everyone. The contenders need to have involvement in any of the going with - Life sciences, Doctors, Bachelors in Pharmacology, and Nursing.

 3)Bachelor of Science in Clinical Research - Bachelor degrees unlike the Masters course is all the more beginning in nature and clears the paths for different options for the understudy searching after this subject. The measures and capability for this course differentiates for what it's worth, yet an eagerness for science is crucial for all. This course has a range of 3 years and is best for future hopefuls who are looking for a fledgling course in research.

 4) Certification in Clinical Research-this is a course that can be on the web or separated reliant on the accreditation course you are taken on, it generally has a term of in any event a half year and a restriction of 1 year. Clinical research course is proficient for the people who have a solid foundation and establishment in the field of drug and pharmacology as it will be an extra motivation to their resume and will help them with examining various perspectives in their field of work.

 These courses are made to such an extent that it updates the understudies' data in the field of science, and the ethical rules followed by foundations and centers, it develops the understudy as an assessment inspector with the right capacity to manage particular social events and events that incorporates the empowering of biomedical investigation.

 Clariwell Global Services, arranged in Pune offers one such specific and extraordinary course, which incorporates a clear and interfacing technique for acknowledging which causes the candidate acclimate to the settings of their future master capacities as Clinical Research Analysts. The understudy is familiar with contrasting features and given planning concerning building ground-breaking associations through correspondence, how one must set up their resumes and headway of their specific presentations, and how to successfully pass interviews. As Clariwell Global Services places assets into their laborers, who are developed Trainers known for their inclination in the field of Clinical Research. The Trainers deal with the up-and-comers by giving them introduction to the corporate field, by methods for consistent experiences. As the course is arranged in an overall thought about path by fit people from the business, whose capacity goes far past the perusing material data.

 At the point when the understudy has been arranged and experienced in the field there are plentiful work openings, especially in the current circumstance as significantly arranged specialists are required in the business. Clinical Research planning is coordinated by Clariwell Global Services, and this instructional class is created with the possibility of future business being kept at its middle, for the two newcomers similarly as especially arranged specialists. Clinical research field is reliably requiring new innovative game plans and marvelous contenders who can make a suffering impact in the field of pharmacological assessment, both valuable and productive in nature a course in Clinical Research has a bigger number of preferences than one can check.

[energymanagementsystem-blog]

Included by The Edge: Never Waste a Crisis

As affiliations work to pick up the pace with cross the robotized openings inside their relationship, there is a creating need to address the test factors that go with digitalisation which circuits issues of cost, limit need and nonappearance of scale. With the ever-pushing business parcel lead, business pioneers have used on deftness and improvement ton ensure their affiliations suffer and flourish this pandemic. Starting late, Plus Solar was met by The Edge as an alum of EY's Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 close to industry pioneers on how we have executed digitalisation to fight the current money related impact.

Find the media thought by The Edge underneath:

One of the activities the business plan has expected to learn and understand during the Covid-19 pandemic is that affiliations ought to be agile. For most, powerful change was filtered through as pioneers pushed their workforce to turn rapidly and usefully contemplating the rapidly making scene. A dash of the records of progress and quality are inspiring affirming picked decisions that have had a significant impact for the affiliations. Here, 12 mindful Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The Year graduated class people share the activities they have aced during the Movement Control Order (MCO) and the persuading propels they have taken, in the craving for supporting distinctive relationship in their drive towards recovery and productivity. Click here energy management system

In like way SOLAR SYSTEMS SDN BHD

Ko Chuan Zhen, prime supporter + CEO

Poh Tyng Huei, prime supporter + head working position

Ryan Oh Zhi Kang, prime supporter + director improvement official

A strong foundation alone will shield a business from spilling, and that is really what we need this year. Never waste a crisis. We outfit the pandemic as a push factor to develop our properties and catch extra chances. We realigned our inspiration and provoked our Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) answers for animate the digitalisation of essentialness in Malaysia. That inferred adjusting to swarm direct and the changing scene rapidly. With digitalisation as a push, we uncovered our AIoT blueprints and used our changed customer keep up. These credits enabled us to deal with the overall development in enquiries and collect better relationship with our client base. As affiliations work to diminish their overall operational costs, centrality has rose as among the essential utilizations. We are managing our AIoT answers for address this, to enable 20%-30% of significance experience assets for clients and update their overall imperativeness usage for tremendous standard concern save stores.

THE CENTER OF APPLIED DATA SCIENCE SDN BHD (CAD)

Sharala Axryd, coordinator + CEO

Coordinating pay was among our hardest troubles. In proceeding with the business during tricky stretches, we discovered such an astounding total about people's ability to work from home and the favorable position it yielded. We also enabled the modernized differentiation in our things and got the ground towards changing into an outlines connection. Affiliations would not have the decision to help this with waving if they don't digitize their business and handle data appraisal. This advantages to financials. Use predictable evaluation to see where the pay will begin from, how you can stay material, and how you can refresh or improve your business and pay. We are eventually social event the dashboard with the fitting cash related numbers — coming up and approaches to improve errands, encounters and others in one focus source. Starting there, you can decide your cash exhaust, pay projection and operational costs. Appraisal is applied to that yet it must be connected with all business works out. As opposed to relying on data being figured out how to you, you could get the chance to cash related information from your own superb work zone. This is the procedures by which I use evaluation for a post-Covid-19 economy. With data immediately open, we can be vigilant instead of responsive.

Clinical INNOVATION VENTURES SDN BHD (MEDIVEN)

Dr Lim Li Sze, prime supporter + undertakings boss.

We opposed the primer of running a get-together office while clinging to standard working structures to ensure the flourishing of our family. We likewise expected to ensure the ideal get-together of customer orders. Luckily, our extraordinarily solid staff people have been doing all that they can to address these issues. Shocking assistance with the deftly wrestle furthermore helps with ensuring everything runs with no issue. In a difficult situation, it is your allies, family and people you fathom who will go to your guide. When pushed, humanity can make creative responses for oversee issues. We have seen an ordinary triple helix association, where the academic framework, private firms and the lawmaking body have gotten together to make innovative developments for keen fundamental reasoning. Structure. It a piece of the time takes the outright movement from structures getting together to deal with an issue. It is ideal to not overpromise yet to concentrate on flawless figures. Being inventively forefront is basic. As Mediven was inventively current, it allowed us to consider a Covid-19 test pack at short warning. To have the choice to manage a crisis, it is fundamental to set up the relationship for change and to be questionable to the upsides and drawbacks of making a good choice.

LOOB HOLDING SDN BHD (TEALIVE ASIA)

Bryan Loo, CEO

We used to dispatch 200 outlets dependably as the association structure was vivaciously dependent upon exponential store improvement. With the pandemic, regardless, progress was done — locally comparably as for the most part. We grew quickly. We took our standard squares and-mortar model and meandered into electronic business, starting with our notable DIY bubble tea pack. We moreover began noteworthy joint endeavors with keen moving customer things brands, for instance, Wall's and made the Special Edition Tealive Boba Ice Cream with them. We will after a short time dispatch a particular air pocket bistro on GrabMart and Pandamart.

It is furthermore essential to audit that relationship for people are driven by people. Persistently offer criticalness and vitality in the social event as it attracts consistent commitment while investigating the dull with you and will over the long haul lead your business to accomplishments. During seasons of crisis, business pioneers step up to guarantee their family, customers and amigos — and occasionally that infers making irregular decisions. Regardless, that is our motivation for the length of customary everyday presence — to push through the preventions and drive our vision unequivocally.

MYNEWS HOLDINGS BHD

Darn Tai Luk, coordinator + CEO

We took in the centrality of building a versatile business that is a great deal of furnished with inside system s and cutoff focuses as this considers business advancement with less outside help with a crisis. With the business world going genuinely blend, the blueprints of our online business piece have extended a few spread. Squares and-mortar affiliations must leave on online business to secure another flood of plans to improve their physical closeness. Likewise, improvement orchestrating is central for business congruity, especially when the risk of disease is high. At the height of the pandemic, we set the inspiration driving business reasonableness contemplating laborers while serving frontliners in the structure. A cost decline practice helped us to discard wide overheads. We are using this opportunity to address wavers and deficiencies that have been improved by the crisis. Your collusion will move out of it more capable and even more thin, lastly extension in bargains on account of the more wide utilization of progress. I don't know whether the world will whenever return to commensurate included boulevards and strip malls of pre-Covid-19 days. Customer direct has moved. Human traffic will reduce as people bind their new turns of events and work from home. In like manner, it is constantly basic to keep your pay strong to help similarly as may be sensible.

FUSIONEX GROUP

Datuk Seri Ivan Teh, originator + bunch CEO

I call it "Capable" — flexibility, quietness and sympathy. These have been the best key arrangements from Covid-19 and the MCO. Adaptability has been the most ideal approach to manage dealing with this pandemic and the outstanding unexpected movement that has climbed out of it. Being a tech association, we have had the upside of deftness in pushing toward business and working up our obligations. We by then set up the centrality of keeping the legitimate social event reasonable. In the all out of this, compassion has been a value we have understood to identify with others who are encountering [the same] issues. My hardest test was restricting the impact of the pandemic on the connection and keeping the staff convinced. Our affiliation picked honestly off the bat that we would keep up staff resolve through considering remuneration rates, allowing difficult to reach work, making open correspondence between social gatherings, encouraging them that they are absolutely bit of "pack Fusionex" and ensuring their families were secured and sound. See and experience the blessing from paradise to support synergistic affiliations and plots over the business go since everyone is endeavoring to keep their business above water. Accomplice before long with movement helpers to follow endeavors in regions, for instance, AI, monstrous data evaluation, blockchain, Internet of Things, online business, and so forth. Bear the present and perceive the open strategy to retrain, reskill and reexamine to set yourself up.Visit here https://edge.plus-solar.com.my/

[vitrexotin-reviews-blog]

vitrexotin Reviews

Vitrexotin – Going commonplace is a huge trouble nowadays, and utilizing male update supplements is more inescapable than later in late memory also. Most male improvement supplements use every single common fragment to engage clients to vanquish issues like ungainliness, little penis measure, low drive, and that is only a trace of something bigger. While there is an authentic nonappearance of keen information about male improvement supplements because of a low number of accumulates into the subject, the data that exists is satisfactory to get a handle on the basic central focuses and wounds of utilizing Male Enhancement Supplements. Evaluating the uncommon and repulsive is the guideline genuine weigh for anybody to pick if these things are supported paying little brain to their opportunity and cash. In reality, still there is a desire and some reliable things like Vitrexotin that can help.

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 Cost and comfort are the other two focal points that you get with this Male Enhancement Supplement it can offer a man. There's no persuading inspiration to get a Drug from an expert, this male improvement supplement can be referenced on the web and it is commonly more reasonable than various solutions will be. What's more, this upgrade, as a rule, bases on various issues rather than a particular one. Rather than a fair deficiency, this upgrade can help erection quality, sex drive, balance hormones, sperm check is extended and basically more.

 Components of Vitrexotin

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 Each and every ordinary fixing: – There are unequivocal fixings that can gather length and size by a full inch. You can use its structure close by standard exercise. On the other hand, you should be exceptionally watchful and know your obstructions, as it is totally simple to tear the adaptable tissue.

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 There are ordinary aphrodisiacs open in this thing and they all are attempted to give a lift to your penis size. The sum of their focuses fixings are real performers and can give you the stone hard erections, perseverance and created you require vanquishing the center of the lady in the room. Its fixings first addition your capacity of intensity. Feeling progressively blended is the best approach to get all the more full erections without pummeling intermeddle. Right when your ability is extended your accessory will get thusly. It's speedy acting plans give increasingly secure erections inside an hour since it ordinarily assembles circulatory system. Also works on your perseverance so you can continue as long as you show up at the pinnacle and guarantees that you immediately plan for the accompanying reverence making a red hot gathering with your assistants.

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China releasing information on COVID-19 and advancing international cooperation on epidemic response

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic is a major public health emergency that has spread the fastest, caused the most extensive infections and been the hardest to contain since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, China has taken the most comprehensive, the strictest and the most thorough prevention and control measures to battle the epidemic. In their tenacious fight against the coronavirus, 1.4 billion Chinese people have pulled together in tough times and paid a tremendous price and sacrificed a lot.

With the joint efforts of the whole nation, the positive trend in preventing and controlling the epidemic in China has been constantly consolidated and expanded, and the restoration of normal production and everyday life has been quickened.

The pandemic has recently been spreading rapidly across the world, posing a formidable challenge to global public health security. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 had affected more than 200 countries and regions with over 1.13 million confirmed cases by April 5,2020.

Virus knows no national borders, and the epidemic distinguishes no races. Only with solidarity and by cooperation can the international community prevail over the pandemic and safeguard the common homeland of humanity. Upholding the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, China has been timely releasing information on COVID-19 since the onset of the epidemic in an open, transparent and responsible manner, unreservedly sharing with the WHO and the international community its experience in epidemic response and medical treatment, and strengthening cooperation on scientific research. It has also provided assistance to all parties to the best of its ability. All these efforts have been applauded and widely recognized by the international community.

Based on media reports and information from the National Health Commission, scientific research institutions and other departments, Xinhua News Agency sorted out the main facts China has taken in the global joint anti-virus efforts to timely release epidemic information, share prevention and control experience, and advance international exchanges and cooperation on epidemic response.

The following timeline was arranged in chronological order.

Late December 2019

・ The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in central China's Hubei Province detected cases of pneumonia of unknown cause.

Dec. 30, 2019

・ The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notification to medical institutions under its jurisdiction, ordering efforts to appropriately treat patients with pneumonia of unknown cause.

Dec. 31, 2019

・ The National Health Commission (NHC) made arrangements in the wee hours, sending a working group and an expert team to Wuhan to guide epidemic response and conduct on-site investigations.

・ The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a briefing on its website about the pneumonia outbreak in the city, confirming 27 cases and telling the public not to go to enclosed public places or gather. It suggested wearing face masks when going out.

・ Starting Dec. 31, 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released briefings on the pneumonia outbreak in accordance with the law.

January 2020

Jan. 1

・ The NHC set up a leading group to determine the emergency response to the epidemic. The group convened meetings on a daily basis since then.

Jan. 2

・ The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) received the first batch of samples of four patients from Hubei Province and began pathogen identification.

・ The NHC came up with a set of guidelines on early discovery, early diagnosis and early quarantine for the prevention and control of the viral pneumonia of unknown cause.

Jan. 3

・ Starting Jan. 3, China has been regularly informing the WHO, relevant countries and regions and China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan about the pneumonia outbreak.

・ China began to inform the United States of the pneumonia outbreak and response measures on a regular basis.

・ The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission updated briefing on its website about the situation of viral pneumonia of unknown cause, reporting a total of 44 cases of viral pneumonia of unknown cause.

・ The NHC organized the China CDC and three other institutions to carry out parallel laboratory testing of the samples for pathogen identification.

・ The NHC and the Health Commission of Hubei Province jointly worked out nine documents on the outbreak, including a trial version of guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of viral pneumonia of unknown cause.

Jan. 4

・ The NHC and relevant health departments in Hubei Province issued a treatment manual for viral pneumonia of unknown cause to all medical institutions in Wuhan City, and provided citywide training.

・ Head of the China CDC talked over phone with director of the U.S.CDC about the pneumonia outbreak. The two sides agreed to keep in close contact for information sharing and technological cooperation.

Jan. 5

・ The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission updated briefing on the situation of viral pneumonia of unknown cause, reporting a total of 59 cases. Laboratory test results ruled out respiratory pathogens, such as influenza, avian influenza, adenovirus, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, as the cause.

・ China informed the WHO about the outbreak updates.

・ The WHO released its first briefing on cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan.

Jan. 6

・ The NHC gave a briefing on cases of pneumonia of unknown cause at a national health conference, calling for efforts to strengthen monitoring, analysis and study, and make timely response.

Jan. 7

・ Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, made instructions on epidemic response when presiding over a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

・ The China CDC succeeded in isolating the first novel coronavirus strain.

Jan. 8

・ An expert evaluation team from the NHC initially identified a new coronavirus as the cause of the epidemic.

・ Heads of China and U.S. CDCs talked over phone to discuss technological exchanges and cooperation.

Jan. 9

・ An expert team from the NHC made public of the pathogen, saying a new type of coronavirus was initially identified as the cause of the viral pneumonia in Wuhan.

・ China informed the WHO about the epidemic, sharing with the WHO the initial progress in determining the cause of the viral pneumonia in Wuhan.

・ The WHO released on its website a statement regarding a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, saying that preliminary identification of a novel coronavirus in a short period of time is a notable achievement.

Jan. 10

・ Research institutions including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) developed testing kits. Wuhan City organized tests of all relevant cases admitted at hospitals in the city.

・ Head of the NHC Ma Xiaowei talked over phone with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus about the epidemic response.

・ Head of China CDC exchanged information over phone with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

・ The China CDC shared with the WHO the specific primers and probes for detecting the novel coronavirus.

Jan. 11

・ The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission updated briefing on the situation of viral pneumonia of unknown cause.

Jan. 12

・ The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission changed the name of "viral pneumonia of unknown cause "to "pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus" for the first time in a briefing.

・ The China CDC, the CAMS and the WIV under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), as designated agencies of the NHC, submitted to the WHO the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was published by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) and shared globally.

・ The NHC shared with the WHO about information on the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus.

Jan. 13

・ The NHC held a meeting to instruct Wuhan authorities to further strengthen social management measures and body temperature monitoring of people at ports and stations, as well as reduce crowd gathering.

・ Delegations from the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan visited Wuhan (until Jan. 14.)

・ Wuhan Municipal Health Commission updated the outbreak briefing on its official website, saying Wuhan had reported a total of 41 cases of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus as of Jan. 12.

・ The WHO issued on its official website a statement on the discovery of the novel coronavirus cases in Thailand, pointing out that China's sharing of the genome sequence enabled more countries to quickly diagnose patients.

Jan. 14

・ The NHC held a national teleconference, making arrangements for Hubei Province and Wuhan City to strengthen epidemic prevention and control, while ordering the whole country to prepare for epidemic prevention and response.

Jan. 15

・ The NHC unveiled the first version of guidelines on diagnosis and treatment for pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus, along with the guidelines on prevention and control measures.

Jan.16

・ After the optimization of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) diagnostic reagents was complete, Wuhan City took proactive measures to screen all patients treated in fever clinics or under medical observation in 69 secondary or above hospitals.

・ Foreign journalists asked about the epidemic for the first time at a press conference held by the Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing. Foreign ministry spokesperson said that China has timely informed the WHO and other international organizations of the outbreak and kept close communication with them.

Jan. 17

・ The NHC sent seven inspection teams to different provincial-level regions to instruct local epidemic prevention and control work.

Jan. 18

・ The NHC organized and sent a high-level expert team, headed by Zhong Nanshan, to Wuhan City to carry out on-site investigation into the prevention and control work (until Jan. 19).

・ The NHC released the second version of guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment for the pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus.

Jan. 19

・ The NHC distributed nucleic acid testing reagents to health departments across the country.

・ The China CDC communicated with the U.S. CDC on epidemic prevention and control.

・ Wuhan Municipal Health Commission updated the outbreak briefing on its official website, saying as of Jan. 17, Wuhan had reported a total of 62 confirmed cases, including 19 cases discharged after recovery, eight cases with severe symptoms, and two deaths.

Jan. 20

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has made important instructions on the outbreak of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus in Wuhan City and other places in Hubei Province, stressing the Party committees and governments at all levels must put people's safety and health as the top priority, make thorough plans, take effective measures to curb the spread of the virus, timely release information and deepen international cooperation.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Premier Li Keqiang chaired an executive meeting of the State Council to make further arrangements on the prevention and control work of the pneumonia outbreak caused by the novel coronavirus.

・ A teleconference of the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council was held in Beijing, at which Vice Premier Sun Chunlan stressed local authorities must take their responsibilities, strengthen the prevention and control measures, secure people's health, and maintain normal production and everyday life order.

・ Wuhan Municipal Health Commission updated the outbreak briefing on its official website: as of 10 p.m. on Jan. 19, Wuhan reported a total of 198 cases of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus, with 25 cured and discharged cases, three deaths.

・ The NHC held a press conference for the high-level expert team headed by Zhong Nanshan, who on the team's behalf confirmed human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus and called on people not to go to Wuhan except for extremely important reasons.

・ The NHC released a statement to classify the novel coronavirus pneumonia as a category B infectious disease under the law on prevention and control of infectious diseases, but take preventive and control measures of category A infectious diseases; the novel coronavirus pneumonia was put under quarantinable infectious disease management according to the Frontier Health and Quarantine Law.

・ The NHC published the second version of guidelines on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus pneumonia.

・ Researchers from City University of Hong Kong published a genetic analysis on the bioRxiv preprint platform, suggesting what animals that serve as the transmission vehicle of the 2019-nCoV remains to be identified.

Jan. 21

・ The NHC started to update via its official website and its new media platform the epidemic information of the previous day on a daily basis. It had updated 71 times by March 31. Starting on Feb. 3, the English official website of the NHC started releasing epidemic information simultaneously, updating the data for 58 times by March 31.

・ A foreign ministry spokesperson said China will, upon invitation from the WHO, send representatives to attend an International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee meeting.

・ The People's Government of Guangdong Province held a press briefing on the pneumonia outbreak and epidemic prevention and control measures. Zhong Nanshan told the briefing that "since it is known that the virus can be transmitted from people to people, one thing to do is to strictly quarantine patients and track close contacts, which is probably the most important thing," adding that there has been thus far no targeted and effective drugs against the novel coronavirus.

・ The WHO published a statement on its official website saying on Jan.20-21, a WHO delegation conducted a field visit to Wuhan to learn about the response to 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and visited the Wuhan Tianhe Airport, Zhongnan hospital, Hubei provincial CDC.

Chinese experts shared with Gauden Galea, the WHO Representative in China, Olowokure Babatunde and other members of the delegation a range of protocols that will be used in developing international guidelines, including case definitions, clinical management, and infection control among others.

・ The China CDC Weekly reported for the first time the epidemiological characteristics of the novel coronavirus, displaying the whole genome sequence of three strains of the virus, in an article titled "Note from the Field: A Novel Coronavirus Genome Identified in a Cluster of Pneumonia Cases－Wuhan, China 2019-2020."

・ Researchers from the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai under the CAS, the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences, and the CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences published a paper in the English version of "Science China Life Science," titled "Evolution of the novel coronavirus from the ongoing Wuhan outbreak and modeling of its spike protein for risk of human transmission," evaluating the potential human-to-human transmission capacity of the virus, providing scientific theoretical basis for confirming the source and transmission route of infection as soon as possible and formulating prevention and control strategies.

Jan. 22

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with French President Emmanuel Macron at request.

Macron said that France supports China in actively dealing with the epidemic and is willing to enhance health cooperation with the Chinese side.

Xi said that since the outbreak, China has taken strict measures in prevention, control and treatment, and has been releasing relevant information to the public and keeping the World Health Organization as well as relevant countries and regions informed in a timely manner.

China is willing to work with the international community to effectively tackle the spread of the disease and maintain global health security, Xi said.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at request.

Merkel said Germany appreciates China's efforts to respond in a timely manner, stay open and transparent, and actively carry out international cooperation, adding that Germany is willing to provide China with support and assistance.

Xi expressed his gratitude to Germany, stressing that China is willing to strengthen cooperation with Germany, the WHO and the international community.

・ The NHC published the third version of guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of novel coronavirus pneumonia, detailing the use of traditional Chinese medicine in treatment.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference about epidemic and the prevention and control work, advising people outside Wuhan not to go to the city in principle and Wuhan residents not to leave the city without special reasons.

・ At the invitation of the WHO, China attended an International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee meeting along with other countries affected by the epidemic. Participating countries, the WHO and experts shared information on the epidemic and conducted scientific research and assessment of the epidemic at the meeting.

・ China's NHC received a notification from the United States saying the first confirmed case had been reported in the United States.

・ The China CDC weekly for the first time reported the epidemiological investigation results of the pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus in Wuhan in an article titled "Note from the Field: An Outbreak of NCIP (2019-nCoV) Infection in China－Wuhan, Hubei Province 2019-2020."

・ Researchers from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research and the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, posted their sequence analysis of the 2019-nCoV on a medical discussion forum Virological, suggesting the novel coronavirus may have originated in bats rather than snakes.

・ The 2019 Novel Coronavirus Resource (2019nCoVR), a database develop by the China National Center for Bioinformation, was officially launched to release worldwide novel coronavirus genome and information on variation analysis.

Jan. 23

・ Wuhan epidemic prevention and control headquarters issued a notice to shut down the city's outbound channels at airports and railway stations starting 10 a.m. on Jan. 23.

・ In an emergency notice, the Ministry of Transport demanded other parts of the country suspend the passenger traffic into Wuhan by road or by waterway.

・ The NHC and other five departments jointly issued a statement on preventing the transmission of the novel coronavirus-caused pneumonia via transportation, requiring efforts for health management of vehicles, trains, planes and other means of transport, as well as key places including stations, airports and docks to prevent to the greatest extent the spread of the epidemic.

・ Researchers from WIV under the CAS, Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital and the Hubei Provincial CDC found that the full-length genome sequences of the 2019-nCoV shares 79.5 percent of SARS-CoV sequence, which was published on the bioRxiv preprint platform.

Jan. 24

・ Researchers from the Beijingbased China-Japan Friendship Hospital, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital published an article in the Lancet, titled "Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China."

・ WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on social media thanked the Chinese government for its cooperation and transparency, saying that the Chinese government has been successful in isolating and sequencing the virus very quickly and has shared that genetic sequence with the WHO and the international community.

・ The National Microbiology Data Center and the National Pathogen Resources Collection Center jointly established the Novel Coronavirus National Science and Technology Resource Service System, releasing the first electron microscope picture of the virus and strain information.

Jan. 25

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the outbreak of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus, making further study of and new arrangements on issues especially related to the treatment of patients.

The meeting decided to set up a CPC Central Committee leading group for the epidemic response work under the leadership of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

The CPC Central Committee decided to send guidance groups to Hubei Province and other seriously affected areas to enhance the frontline prevention and control work.

・ The NHC unveiled six guidelines on public prevention for general use, tourism, households, public places, public transport and self observation at home.

・ The NHC replied in a letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, welcoming the WHO to send a group of international experts to cooperate with China to strengthen epidemic prevention and control.

・ Led by the China CDC, several hospitals and research institutes jointly published a paper, titled "The novel coronavirus carried by Chinese pneumonia patients in 2019," revealing their finding of a Betacoronavirus that had never been seen before through whole genome sequencing, which became the seventh member of the coronavirus family that infects human.

Jan. 26

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and head of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, presided over the leading group's meeting. The meeting made further epidemic prevention and control arrangements according to instructions by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference to invite the NHC head Ma Xiaowei to brief on the epidemic and introduce the joint prevention and control work.

Ma told the press conference recent clinical results showed that the novel coronavirus has more transmissibility and the epidemic situation is grim and complicated, adding that the country is at a crucial time in the prevention and control of the outbreak.

Ma said that the source of infection is yet to be found and studies are still needed to understand its pathogenicity, adding that the possibility of virus changes over time can't be ruled out.

・ The NHC and relevant departments jointly provided detailed information to the WHO Western Pacific Region on measures taken in Wuhan which may restrict international travel, including the suspended operation of city buses, subways and ferries, as well as public health reasons for the above measures.

Jan. 27

・ A guidance group, sent by the CPC Central Committee and headed by Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, arrived in Wuhan to guide the epidemic prevention and control work in Hubei Province, repeatedly demanding open and transparent release of epidemic information.

・ The NHC released the fourth version of guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of novel coronavirus pneumonia.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing to give briefings on the development of the community-based prevention measures to curb the novel coronavirus epidemic.

Such press conference has been held every day since Jan. 27, releasing updated data on a daily basis, including new confirmed cases, people discharged from hospital, people who had had close contact with infected patients and were discharged from medical observation, severe cases, deaths, suspected cases, people receiving treatment in quarantine, close contacts still under medical observation, accumulative data on the Chinese mainland as well as data reported in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan.

As of March 31, 65 press conferences under the mechanism had been held on a wide range of topics, including the epidemic prevention and control, treatment and scientific research. Officials of 69 departments answered 779 questions raised by Chinese and foreign reporters at the conferences.

・ Head of China's NHC Ma Xiaowei talked over phone with U.S. secretary of health and human services Alex Azar at request, discussing the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Jan. 28

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Beijing.

"The epidemic is a devil. We will not let it hide," Xi said, stressing the Chinese government has released information about the epidemic in a timely, open, transparent and responsible manner, actively responded to concerns of all sides, and enhanced cooperation with the international community.

Xi noted that China is ready to work with the WHO as well as the international community to safeguard regional and global public health security.

・ The NHC released the third-edition guidelines on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus pneumonia.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on details of medical workers sent from other parts of China to Hubei Province to help fight the epidemic.

・ The Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a briefing for foreign embassies and missions in China on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The NHC and the foreign ministry briefed on the current situation and China's efforts to prevent and control the epidemic, and answered questions. Foreign diplomats and representatives present made positive comments on the briefing held by the Chinese side, and appreciated the Chinese government's firm and decisive measures in handling the epidemic, as well as the open, transparent and responsible attitude it has shown. They said that they are willing to strengthen communication and coordination with the Chinese side, and cooperate with China in prevention and control efforts to jointly safeguard regional and international health security.

Jan. 29

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the response to the novel coronavirus outbreak to further study the prevention and control of the epidemic, and roll out targeted and enhanced measures to curb the epidemic.

・ Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, also head of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, spoke over phone with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Pompeo expressed appreciation for China's timely response to U.S. concerns after the epidemic.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing to advise the public on the prevention of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

・ A thesis on the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus by a research team of the WIV of the CAS was formally accepted by the journal Nature.

・ The China CDC published an epidemiological feature analysis of the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in the New England Journal of Medicine.

・ Researchers from the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and WIV under the CAS published an article in the Lancet, titled "Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study", revealing data regarding clinical features and treatment of novel coronavirus patients.

・ Researchers from the China CDC published a paper in the Lancet, titled "Genomic characterization and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding," analyzing 10 genome sequences of 2019-nCoV obtained from nine confirmed patients in Wuhan.

・ Research team of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the CAS published an article on the bioRxiv preprint platform, revealing research results about drugs by computer-simulated screening.

・ Researchers of the Institute of Automation under the CAS published an article on the medRxiv preprint platform, estimating the development trend of the epidemic based on the daily reported novel coronavirus cases by the China CDC.

Jan. 30

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on policies to ensure transportation of anti-epidemic materials in the fight against the novel coronavirus outbreak.

・ China's NHC notified the U.S.side that American experts are welcomed to join the China-WHO joint mission. The U.S. side responded the same day and expressed their appreciation.

・ The China CDC published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled "Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia," revealing the epidemiological characteristics of the 2019-nCoV on the basis of data collected from the first 425 confirmed cases.

Jan. 31

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, making arrangements for the transportation for the post-Spring Festival trips while enhancing the epidemic prevention and control.

・ The NHC released guidelines on gathering patients infected with novel coronavirus that show severe symptoms into designated medical institutions for treatment, in order to minimize the fatality rate and increase the recovery rate.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on the epidemic prevention and control work concerning major groups and by community organizations.

February 2020

Feb. 1

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang spoke over phone with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, noting the Chinese government and people have confidence, resolution and ability to win the battle against the epidemic.

Li said China is willing to strengthen information, policy and technology exchanges, and carry out relevant cooperation with EU and the international community.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing giving briefings on the epidemic prevention and control work concerning pregnant women, infants and nurseries.

Feb. 2

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, urging authorities in some provincial-level regions to flexibly arrange their work to battle the epidemic, step up prevention and control efforts and ensure market supply while pledging greater medical supplies support to key areas in Hubei Province.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing providing epidemic prevention guidance for people exposed to public places, public transport and other potential coronavirus risks.

As revealed by China CDC experts at the press conference, the finding of novel coronavirus from fecal samples of confirmed cases showed the virus can exist and replicate in digestive tract, but it needs further epidemiological research to determine whether the virus can transmit through the fecal-oral route or respiratory droplets-formed aerosol.

・ Head of China's NHC Ma Xiaowei sent a letter to the U.S. secretary of health and human services Alex Azar, further exchanging views on bilateral cooperation in health as well as epidemic prevention and control.

Feb. 3

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to hear briefings from the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak and from relevant departments, and study epidemic prevention and control work in the near future. Xi's speech was later published on the Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee, in its fourth issue of 2020.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference on ensuring supplies of crucial anti-epidemic medical materials and daily necessities. At the press conference, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said about 60 percent of production capacity of domestic mask manufacturers have been resumed. Though N95 masks were in shortage, the supply would keep on increasing through expanded domestic production and increased international procurement.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about provision of psychological assistance through online or hotline counseling services amid efforts to prevent and control the epidemic.

・ During the first online press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a ministry spokesperson gave briefings on donations of epidemic prevention and control supplies China has received. The spokesperson said China attaches great importance to the lives and health of Chinese and foreign nationals in Wuhan, and has timely taken effective measures to address their concerns and needs.

・ The NHC introduced the epidemic situation in China and presented suggestions for further cooperation at a video conference held among senior health officials from China, ASEAN, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK).

・ The WHO Executive Board convened its 146th session meeting in Geneva, during which China's deputy permanent representative to the UN Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland called for concerted efforts from the international community to combat the epidemic.

・ As of Feb. 3, China has given the United States briefings on the epidemic information and control measures in China for 30 times, including sharing with U.S. CDC project manager in China information about China's diagnosis and treatment guidelines, prevention and control guidelines, and the linkage of the novel coronavirus database that China shares with the world in real time.

・ Officials of the China CDC welcomed a U.S. expert from the Columbia University.

・ Researchers from Fudan University, Central Hospital of Wuhan, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention of China CDC, Wuhan CDC, and the University of Sydney published a paper in the journal Nature, titled "A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China."

Feb. 4

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, rolling out measures to improve the admission and cure rates, reduce the infection and fatality rates of patients in Wuhan, and further improve supplies of medical materials and life necessities.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on the treatment of novel coronavirus-infected patients with severe symptoms.

As revealed by the NHC at the press conference, the number of confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland had reached 20,438 as of Feb. 3, with a total of 425 deaths and a fatality rate of 2.1 percent. The NHC vowed to concentrate resources to improve the admission and cure rates and reduce the infection and fatality rates.

・ Head of the China CDC spoke over phone with director of the U.S.National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to exchange information on the epidemic.

・ The Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health and Harvard University had first discussion over scientific research cooperation to fight the novel coronavirus epidemic.

・ Researchers from WIV under the CAS and the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences released a paper in the journal Cell Research, titled "Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro."

Feb. 5

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that President Xi Jinping presided over the third meeting of the Commission for Overall Law-based Governance of the CPC Central Committee, and delivered an important speech, stressing that under the CPC Central Committee's centralized and unified leadership, ensuring the safety and health of the people should always be prioritized.

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, and head of the Commission for Overall Law-based Governance of the CPC Central Committee, called for greater legislative, law enforcement, judicial and law observance efforts to strengthen the capacity to carry out law-based epidemic prevention and control. Excerpts of Xi's speech at the meeting were published by the Qiushi Journal in its fifth issue of 2020.

・ President Xi Jinping met with Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen in Beijing, saying a friend in need is a friend indeed as the Cambodian people stand with the Chinese people at this special moment.

Xi said Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and his mother, former Queen Norodom Monineath Sihanouk, had specially extended sympathy and support to the Chinese side.

The Cambodian prime minister had expressed strong support to China on many occasions and even made a special tour to China, which demonstrated unbreakable friendship and mutual trust between the two nations and showcased the essence of building a community of shared future of the two countries, Xi said.

・ The NHC made revisions and published the fifth edition of guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of the novel coronavirus patients.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on the latest development of work involving production, dispatch and imports of medical supplies, and briefing on the fifth-edition guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of the novel coronavirus patients.

・ While meeting with a delegation of Russian experts on epidemic prevention, a Chinese foreign ministry official said China is committed to maintaining global public health security and conducting international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control in the principles of openness and transparency. The epidemic prevention exchanges and joint research between the two countries will definitely help win the fight against the epidemic.

・ While meeting with French Ambassador to China Laurent Bili, a Chinese foreign ministry official briefed him on the latest situation of the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak, saying that the life and health of French citizens in China are guaranteed and it is hoped that France will view and support the Chinese side's work in a rational, calm and scientific manner.

・ Chinese foreign ministry hosted the second briefing on the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak for diplomatic missions in China. The briefing was held online and attended by representatives of more than 180 diplomatic missions. Officials from the NHC and the foreign ministry gave briefings on the epidemic situation and the containment measures taken by the Chinese government, and answered questions of concern to the diplomatic envoys.

Feb. 6

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke over phone with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at request, noting China will keep on working with Saudi Arabia and other countries to jointly handle the epidemic, and maintain public health security in the region and around the world in openness and transparency.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, making arrangements of more targeted measures to enhance epidemic prevention and control, and resume production and ensure market supply step by step.

・ While meeting with Ambassador of the United Kingdom to China Barbara Janet Woodward, a Chinese foreign ministry official briefed on the latest development of prevention and control of the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak, and stressed that China has the confidence and capability to win this battle. The life and health of all the foreign nationals, including the British people, are guaranteed.

・ A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said at a regular press conference that the Chinese government puts people's lives and health as its top priority. Acting with openness, transparency and a high sense of responsibility, it has been timely sharing information, enhancing international cooperation, putting in place a nationwide scheme to pool national resources and take the strictest and most thorough measures to fight the outbreak. The ministry started to update cases of the novel coronavirus pneumonia at the regular press conferences.

Feb. 7

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke over phone with U.S. President Donald Trump at request, stressing that China is dedicated to safeguarding the lives and health of not only its own people but also people all over the world.

With an open, transparent and responsible attitude, China has kept the WHO as well as relevant countries and regions, including the United States, posted on the epidemic, and invited WHO and other experts to conduct field visits in Wuhan, Xi said.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held publishing measures to enhance epidemic prevention and control in key regions, and improve the admission and cure rates and reduce the infection and fatality rates.

・ While meeting with Head of the Delegation of the European Union to China Nicolas Chapuis, a Chinese foreign ministry official briefed on the latest development of the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, saying China will continue to share information and data with the EU and the international community in an open, transparent and responsible manner and strengthen cooperation in the field of public health.

・ Experts of the China CDC joined the WHO informal expert conference call and epidemiology working group expert conference call.

Feb. 8

・ The NHC gave briefings on China's anti-epidemic efforts and measures at the first meeting of the APEC health working group.

・ The NHC gave briefings to Chinese diplomatic missions overseas on the country's plans for the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, diagnosis and treatment, monitoring, epidemiological probe and laboratory testing.

・ Chinese, U.S. health authorities had another discussion over arrangements regarding the participation of American experts in the China-WHO joint mission.

Feb. 9

・ Chinese Premier Li Keqiang talked over phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, exchanging views over the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Li said China is open, transparent and highly responsible in epidemic prevention and control work, releasing information to the Chinese people and the international community in a timely manner.

"The measures we have taken have gone far beyond the requirements of the International Health Regulations and the recommendations of the WHO," Li said.

Li said he hopes that the international community, including Germany, can stay rational, support China's efforts in containing the epidemic, maintain normal bilateral exchanges, and strengthen international cooperation on public health security, adding he hopes that the German side can provide China with necessary convenience so that China can purchase medical supplies from Germany through commercial channels.

Feb. 10

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made an inspection tour in Beijing on the epidemic prevention and control. Xi said the situation at the moment remains very serious, calling on Party committees and governments at all levels to firmly follow the CPC Central Committee's decisions and arrangements on epidemic prevention and control.

Xi urged strict enforcement of the general requirements of firm confidence, sticking together in tough times, scientific prevention and control and carrying out targeted policies.

Calling for persistent efforts, Xi said with firmer confidence, more indomitable will and more decisive measures, and by firmly relying on the people, China will resolutely contain the spread of the epidemic, and win the people's all-out war against the epidemic.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, making arrangements to further increase the production and supply of key medical prevention and control materials, and strengthen the deployment of medics and development of drugs against the novel coronavirus.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on measures to enhance epidemic prevention and control at the grassroots level.

・ The Ministry of Commerce held the first online press conference, giving briefings on the supply of daily necessities in the battle against the epidemic. The weekly news conferences had been held for seven consecutive weeks as of March 31, taking many epidemic-related questions, such as about the consumer market, resumption of work and production as well as foreign trade and investment.

・ An advance squad of the WHOled team arrived in Beijing.

Feb. 11

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke over phone with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at request, noting China has been safeguarding the lives and health of the Chinese people and fulfilling responsibility for the cause of global public health by upholding the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Xi said China will continue to strengthen cooperation on the prevention and control of the epidemic with Indonesia and other countries in an open and transparent manner to safeguard regional and global public health security.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at request, stressing that China has been safeguarding the Chinese people's lives and health while actively contributing to global public health security.

Xi said China is willing to maintain close communication with Qatar, timely provide updates on the latest situation of the epidemic, ensure the life and health of the Qatari nationals in China so as to safeguard the health and safety of the people of both countries.

・ Experts of the China CDC participated in a WHO-coordinated research and innovation forum, held on Feb. 11-12 in Geneva, either in person or online. The forum, co-hosted by WHO and the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness, attracted more than 400 participants, including leading scientists from virus-related disciplines, representatives of countries with confirmed COVID-19 cases and those of public health agencies. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO chief scientist, hailed the contribution made by Chinese researchers attending the forum.

・ The China-WHO joint mission held the first meeting, discussing and reaching initial agreement on issues including the principle in determining the list of members, priorities of field visits and agenda of the mission.

・ Experts from the China and U.S.CDCs held a conference call, discussing and sharing epidemic prevention and control information.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on measures to enhance epidemic prevention and control in rural regions.

・ Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the China CDC for the first time used transgenic mice to study the pathogenicity of the novel coronavirus, and published an article in the bioRxiv platform. This may facilitate the development of therapeutics and vaccines.

Feb. 12

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to hear the report of the central leading group on the prevention and control work to the COVID-19 outbreak, analyze the epidemic situation, and study measures to strengthen prevention and control work.

・ Specialists from the NHC joined a China-EU teleconference on COVID-19 related technical exchanges, introducing the latest developments of the epidemic, prevention and control measures, and the situation of international cooperation.

Feb. 13

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad at request, noting that China has taken strong measures in response to the epidemic in a way that not only assumes the responsibility for the health of its people, but also contributes to the cause of global public health, which has been fully recognized by the WHO and other countries in the world.

Xi said China will continue to strengthen cooperation with Malaysia and other ASEAN countries on prevention and control of the epidemic in an open and transparent manner to jointly safeguard regional public health security.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the COVID-19 outbreak, making arrangements to take category-specific prevention and control measures, optimize diagnosis and treatment, and accelerate the development of drugs for the scientific prevention and control efforts.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held on the new category of clinically diagnosed COVID-19 cases.

As revealed at the press conference, the new category was created in Hubei Province to define suspected cases with pneumonia-related computerized tomography (CT) scan results as confirmed cases to facilitate early standardized treatment and further improve the recovery rate.

China is strengthening efforts to treat the 13,332 clinically diagnosed cases in Hubei to reduce the number of severe cases and the death rate.

The WHO supported the adoption of the new category, believing it helpful in providing patients with faster clinical care, while citing the resulting rise in confirmed cases not meaning a major change in the trajectory of the epidemic.

・ The U.S. department of health and human services sent a letter to China's NHC to communicate the arrangements of bilateral cooperation in health and epidemic prevention and control.

・ Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health and Harvard Medical School jointly formed a COVID-19 research team, co-chaired by Chinese respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan and the dean of Harvard Medical School. The team works in four major fields including rapid detection and diagnosis, clinical treatment, drug screening and vaccine development.

Feb. 14

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chairman of the Central Military Commission and the head of the CPC Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform, presided over the 12th meeting of the central committee for deepening overall reform and made an important speech.

Xi stressed safeguarding people's life and health is a major mission of the Party in governing the country, urging efforts to win the battle against the epidemic with scientific and accurate measures, strengthen areas of weakness, and close the loopholes exposed in the current epidemic.

Xi demanded improvement in the mechanism for major epidemic prevention and control and the national public health emergency management system. Excerpts of Xi's speech at the meeting was published by the Qiushi Journal in its fifth issue of 2020.

・ Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, refuted remarks by Lawrence Kudlow, the director of the White House National Economic Council, that described the Chinese government's response to the epidemic outbreak as lacking transparency.

Ryan said the remarks did not accord with the facts, as the Chinese government actively cooperated with the WHO and displayed a high level of transparency.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held announcing China's daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases outside Hubei had been dropping for 10 consecutive days.

Feb. 15

・ Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a speech at the 56th Munich Security Conference, introducing China's decisive measures to combat the COVID-19 epidemic and the notable results it has achieved.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Wuhan, briefing the work of epidemic prevention and control and medical treatment in Hubei Province. It was the first of such conferences held in the province by the office amid the epidemic outbreak. The office held three press conferences in Beijing and Wuhan that day.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Beijing on epidemic prevention and control related to the return trips of the Spring Festival travel rush.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing updating progress in drug development and scientific research related to the COVID-19.

As revealed at the press conference, seven types of detection reagents have been approved to tap the market, while staged progress has been made in drug screening and treatment, vaccine development and animal model construction.

Feb. 16

・ The China-WHO joint expert team started a nine-day field visit in China, scheduled to inspect cities including Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan.

The team consists of 25 experts from China, Germany, Japan, Republic of Korea (ROK), Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, the United States and WHO.

Foreign experts include senior WHO adviser Bruce Aylward, Tim Eckmanns, researcher with the Robert Koch Institute, Dale Fisher, professor at the National University of Singapore, Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Cliff Lane, researcher with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the United States, Jong-Koo Lee, associate professor at Seoul National University College of Medicine, Natalia Pshenichnaia, Aleksandr Semenov, Hitoshi Takahashi, scientist with the National Institute of Infectious Diseases of Japan, Maria van Kerkhove, head of WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, and Weigong Zhou.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing updating the country's prevention and control situation.

As revealed at the press conference, as of Feb. 15, the proportion of severe and critical cases among all confirmed COVID-19 cases had dropped significantly in China (including Wuhan and Hubei Province).

Feb. 17

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on response to the COVID-19 outbreak, making arrangements to continue the treatment of COVID-19 patients and ensure market supply in Hubei Province, particularly in Wuhan City, and advance orderly resumption of work and production while enhancing epidemic prevention and control.

・ During a working consultation with Estonian officials in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, a senior official from the Chinese foreign ministry introduced China's progress in prevention and control of the COVID-19, saying China has confidence, ability and certainty to win the battle against the epidemic.

・ At a press conference in Beijing, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson introduced China's efforts in sharing information and anti-epidemic cooperation with Japan.

Feb. 18

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with French President Emmanuel Macron at request, noting China not only safeguards the lives and health of the Chinese people, but acts in a highly responsible manner for global public health security.

Xi said China has always been open and transparent in its cooperation with France and other countries to deal with the epidemic, adding that China stands ready to work with France to boost practical cooperation in the health sector and jointly safeguard regional and global public health security.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at request, noting that by upholding the idea of building a community with a shared future for mankind, China is not only responsible for the safety and health of its people, but also committed to the cause of safeguarding international public health.

China has made enormous efforts, and has effectively contained the global spread of the virus, Xi said, adding that the Chinese side will continue to cooperate with Britain and all other countries in an open and transparent manner.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing announcing that the daily new confirmed cases nationwide dropped below 2,000 for the first time on Feb. 17, with that outside Hubei Province below 100 for the first time. Daily death across the country also fell below 100 for the first time.

・ The China-WHO joint expert team traveled to Guangdong and Sichuan provinces for a three-day field investigation on the COVID-19 outbreak.

・ An official of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs introduced China's progress in prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic when meeting with Albanian officials at Tirana, the capital of Albania.

・ An official of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs met with Greg Gilligan, the new chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, saying the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic is temporary, and the long-term trend of China's economic development has not changed. China welcomes U.S.enterprises to continue their business in China and hopes to strengthen cooperation with the chamber and its members, the official said.

・ China's NHC replied in a letter to U.S. department of health and human services, further communicating on arrangements for bilateral cooperation on health and epidemic control.

Feb. 19

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to hear reports on the epidemic prevention and control work, and coordinate epidemic control and economic and social development. The meeting decided to submit the relevant measures to the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee for further review.

・ The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs held the third briefing on epidemic prevention and control online. Ambassadors and diplomats from more than 180 foreign missions in China attended the briefing. China's foreign ministry updated the situation of the COVID-19 outbreak in China and the country's efforts in epidemic prevention and control. The Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality introduced the latest epidemic control arrangements related to people returning to Beijing from abroad amid the outbreak, which was closely followed by foreign missions in China. Officials from the education and foreign ministries answered questions relevant to foreign students and employees in China.

Feb. 20

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at request, stressing facts have proved once again that China and Pakistan are true friends and good brothers that share weal and woe. Xi said China will take good care of its Pakistani brothers and sisters in the country like its own citizens.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae-in at request, stressing China's forceful prevention and control measures are not only aimed at safeguarding the lives and health of the Chinese people, but also contributing to the world's public health cause. Xi said China will continue to strengthen communication and cooperation with the Republic of Korea and other countries in an open and transparent manner, so as to tackle the epidemic together and promote the health and well-being of people across the world.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping replied in a letter to Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, expressing his appreciation toward the foundation's act in supporting China's prevention and control work against the COVID-19 epidemic. Xi called for unity and cooperation in the international community to fight the disease.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on response to the COVID-19 outbreak, making arrangements on further improving protection for frontline medics, accelerating effective applications of drugs and continuing to advance orderly resumption of work and production while enhancing epidemic prevention and control measures in a scientific way.

・ Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended a special China-ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting, introducing China's progress in epidemic prevention and control.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Hubei Province, briefing epidemic prevention and control work organized by the guidance group sent to the province by the CPC Central Committee.

・ When asked at a press conference whether the novel coronavirus is a biological weapon, a spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: "What we need in the face of an epidemic is science, rationality and cooperation. We must seek the triumph of science over ignorance, dispel rumors with truth, and replace prejudice with cooperation. We hope the international community, while fighting COVID-19 together, will continue to combat conspiracy theories and other 'political viruses'."

・ Clinical medical experts from China and ASEAN held a video conference to exchange ideas on treatment guidelines and rescue experience on COVID-19 patients.

Feb. 21

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control of the COVID-19 and the coordination between the epidemic control and economic and social development.

The meeting called for deepening opening up and international cooperation, enhancing communication and coordination with China's economic and trade partners, and giving priority to helping the leading enterprises that have a significant influence in the global supply chain to resume production and supply to maintain the stability of the global supply chain.

Efforts will be made to make good use of export credit insurance and encourage key export enterprises to resume operation as soon as possible, according to the meeting.

The meeting also highlighted active international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control from the perspective of building a community with a shared future for humanity.

・ The NHC released the fifth version of guidelines on the prevention and control of the COVID-19.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing announcing the daily number of newly cured and discharged COVID-19 patients on Feb.20 in Wuhan outnumbered that of new confirmed cases for the first time, and the daily number of newly cured and discharged COVID-19 patients nationwide surpassed 2,000 for the first time.

Feb. 22

・ The China-WHO joint expert team arrived in Hubei Province for a two-day field investigation on the COVID-19 outbreak.

The experts visited Tongji Hospital, the Wuhan Sports Center that was converted into a temporary hospital, and the provincial CDC to learn about epidemic prevention and control as well as medical treatment. They also talked with officials and experts in the province.

Feb. 23

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed unremitting efforts on the prevention and control of the COVID-19 and coordination in advancing economic and social development.

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when delivering an important speech at a meeting in Beijing to advance the work on coordinating the prevention and control of the COVID-19 and economic and social development.

The epidemic situation remains grim and complex and it is now a most crucial moment to curb the spread, Xi noted, asking Party committees and governments at all levels to continue to make unremitting efforts in various prevention and control work and resume work and production in an orderly manner.

Efforts should be made to turn pressure into impetus, turn crises into opportunities, restore the work and life order step by step, Xi said, adding measures should be consolidated to stabilize the employment, finance, foreign trade, foreign capital, domestic investment, and expectations, and intensify policy adjustments to fully unleash the huge potential and strong momentum of China's development and strive to achieve the goals and tasks for economic and social development this year, Xi said.

Xi's speech on the meeting was published that day.

Feb. 24

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on response to the COVID-19 outbreak, helping Wuhan City to further enhance epidemic prevention and treatment and making arrangements on region-and category-based differentiated prevention and control strategies.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing announcing China's daily number of new COVID-19 infections had remained below 1,000 for the five consecutive days.

The number of existing confirmed cases had dropped for nearly a week, while the daily number of newly cured and discharged COVID-19 patients was no less than that of new confirmed infections in all provincial-level regions.

・ An official with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs talked over phone respectively with ambassadors of Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and Costa Rica to China, briefing foreign missions on China's epidemic prevention and control work.

・ The China-WHO joint expert team held a press conference in Beijing, during which team members said China's unprecedented public health responses to the COVID-19 outbreak have yielded notable results in slowing the spread of the epidemic and blocking human-to-human transmission of the virus, preventing or at least delaying hundreds of thousands of cases.

・ The China CDC published a paper on The Journal of the American Medical Association, titled "Characteristics of and Important Lessons from the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Outbreak in China", to describe and analyze the epidemiological characteristics of the 72,314 cases of infection reported through Feb. 11 on the Chinese mainland.

・ The Lancet published an article coauthored by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan. The article said Chinese doctors quickly identified the novel coronavirus during the flu season and shared genome sequencing information of the virus with international counterparts through the global scientific research network, which laid the foundation for follow-up scientific research. China's unremitting efforts in preventing and controlling the COVID-19 not only wins precious time for other countries, but also "paves the way "for the international scientific community to jointly deal with the epidemic.

Feb. 25

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at request, noting that the Chinese government has always acted with an open, transparent and responsible attitude, timely shared information, actively addressed the concerns of various parties, and boosted cooperation with the international community.

Xi said China will continue to take effective measures to safeguard the life and health of citizens of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and all other foreign nationals in the country, and stands ready to work with the UAE to maintain close communication on the latest development of the COVID-19 and share experience in epidemic prevention and control.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed at request, noting that African countries and people's various support for China's battle against the COVID-19 outbreak has vividly illustrated the brotherly friendship of sharing weal and woe and helping each other between China and Africa. Xi said African countries are also facing many challenges in epidemic prevention and control, and China is willing to provide them with more medical supplies that are urgently needed, including test kits.

China also stands ready to accelerate the implementation of the health care initiative of the eight major initiatives unveiled during the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, promote the construction of the Africa CDC, and strengthen China-Africa cooperation in public health and disease prevention and control, Xi said.

・ China's NHC shared updated technical guidelines on COVID-19 response with a number of countries and regional organizations.

・ When meeting with Laurent Bili, the French ambassador to China, an official of the Chinese foreign ministry introduced the latest situation of China's notable achievements in fighting COVID-19, stressing that under the strong leadership of President Xi Jinping, the Chinese people are united and have full confidence, capacity and certainty to win the battle against the epidemic.

・ A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said at a press briefing that China is willing to share information and experience with Japan and the Republic of Korea in fighting COVID-19 outbreak and offer support and assistance to them according to their needs.

Feb. 26

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. The meeting was briefed by the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control work of COVID-19 epidemic, analyzed the current situation and made arrangements for prevention and control measures in the near future.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing on the COVID-19 outbreak in prisons.

An official from the ministry of justice told the press that as of Feb.25, five prisons in Hubei, Zhejiang and Shandong provinces had reported 555 confirmed COVID-19 cases and another 19 suspected cases, four severe confirmed cases, adding that no inmates have thus far died of the virus.

・ Experts from the China CDC participated in the WHO's informal expert consultation teleconference on COVID-19.

・ At a regular press conference, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson briefed reporters on COVID-19 infection among foreigners in China.

Feb. 27

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga in Beijing, stressing that by upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, China is making every effort not only to protect the lives and health of its own people but also to contribute to global public health security.

With an open, transparent and responsible attitude, the Chinese government has actively stepped up international cooperation to fight the outbreak, and China's efforts have been highly affirmed and recognized by the WHO and the international community, Xi said, adding China will continue to work with Mongolia and other countries to fight the epidemic and safeguard regional and global public health security.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the prevention and control work of the COVID-19 epidemic, making further arrangements to reduce mortality and ensure the sufficient supply of daily necessities, demanding more detailed prevention and control measures for vulnerable groups and urging strengthened international cooperation.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing, saying that upon the WHO's notice, COVID-19 cases had been reported in some other countries, and the epidemic is spreading quite quickly in a few countries. China would attach equal importance to joint control measures to effectively prevent imported and exported cases, and strengthen cooperation with relevant international organizations and countries to jointly contain the epidemic.

・ The second China-EU special teleconference on COVID-19 was held for health experts from both sides to have in-depth exchanges on epidemic prevention and control measures, diagnosis and screening, and treatment guidelines.

Feb. 28

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel at request, stressing that by upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind and with an attitude of openness, transparency and responsibility, China has timely shared information with the WHO and the international community, actively responded to the concerns of various sides, and strengthened international cooperation in the anti-epidemic fight to prevent it from spreading around the world.

The WHO and the international community have spoken highly of China's prevention and control work, Xi said, adding that China is willing to continue exchanges and cooperation with Cuba in the fields of medicine and epidemic prevention and control.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera at request, noting that the Chinese nation has experienced many ordeals in its history, but has never been overwhelmed.

Xi said the impact of the epidemic on China's economy is temporary and generally manageable, and the fundamentals of China's long-term sound economic growth remain unchanged.

While making unrelenting, solid and meticulous efforts in epidemic prevention and control, China will roll out a series of policies and measures to gradually restore orderly production and life and ensure realization of this year's economic and social development goals, Xi said.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Hubei Province on the progress of the epidemic prevention, control work and medical treatment in Hubei under the direction by the guidance team sent by the CPC Central Committee to the province.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the prevention, control work and treatment of COVID-19.

As revealed by the NHC at the press conference, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Hubei outside Wuhan and that outside Hubei have both dropped to single-digit figures for the first time on Feb. 27. Efforts should not be slackened in prevention and control in communities, medical treatment and other aspects to prevent the epidemic from rebounding.

・ China's NHC participated in the video conference of the Greater Mekong Sub-region's Working Group on Health Cooperation to discuss the challenges and technical needs of epidemic prevention and control.

・ Research teams led by academicians Zhong Nanshan and Li Lanjuan, and researchers from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, the Central Hospital of Wuhan, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and other institutions jointly published a paper on the New England Journal of Medicine, titled "Clinical Characteristics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China", analyzing the data of 1,099 COVID-19 patients' treatment.

・ Research teams from Peking Union Medical College and the China CDC published a paper titled "The Pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 in hACE2 Transgenic Mice," which develops an animal model for COVID-19 and helps promote the development of vaccines and drugs.

Feb. 29

・ Voluntary medical experts from the Red Cross Society of China arrived in Iran.

・ The WHO-China Joint Mission published a report about its field study trip on COVID-19 in China. According to the report, in the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history. As striking, has been the uncompromising rigor of strategy application that proved to be a hallmark in every setting and context where it was examined. Achieving China's exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the treatment of COVID-19 and the recovery of patients.

March 2020

March 1

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the effective prevention and control in accordance with the law of the imported COVID-19 cases.

March 2

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made an inspection tour of the scientific research work for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic in Beijing.

Xi stressed the COVID-19 research must be taken as a major and pressing task, calling for pooling talents and resources of multiple fields under the united leadership and synergy, accelerating the research and development pace on the basis of adhering to science and ensuring safety, to overcome key and difficult issues in epidemic prevention and control as soon as possible to provide strong scientific and technological support for winning the anti-epidemic war. Xi's speech was published by the Qiushi Journal in its sixth issue of 2020.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on COVID-19 response work, making arrangements of prevention and control work for the next stage, to enhance the caring for the community workers at the response frontline and coordinate the work of epidemic prevention and control and spring farming.

・ A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson answered questions on imported cases from Russia at a press conference.

March 3

・ China's NHC unveiled the seventh version of guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19, which made modifications and improvements in the transmission routes, clinical features and diagnostic criteria, and emphasized the integration of traditional Chinese and western medicine in treating the disease.

・ Received by China's NHC, Hala Zayed, Egyptian President's special envoy and Egypt's Minister of Health and Population, visited China and met Chen Zhu, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and president of the Red Cross Society of China.

March 4

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to analyze major tasks in preventing and controlling the COVID-19 epidemic while stabilizing economic and social development.

・ China's NHC sent letters to the health authorities or organizations of Japan, Iran, the Republic of Korea, Italy, Singapore and Pakistan to express concerns on the current COVID-19 outbreak in these countries and hopes to enhance information sharing and technical cooperation.

・ China's foreign ministry and NHC jointly held a multilateral video conference on COVID-19 with experts from six countries including Azerbaijan and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to have in-depth exchanges on areas including prevention and control measures, diagnosis and screening, and laboratory testing.

・ The State Council Information Office held a simultaneous press conference in Beijing and Wuhan, linking frontline Chinese experts in Wuhan who introduced the treatment of COVID-19 with reporters in Beijing via video. The whole meeting was in English.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about promoting production and ensuring supply of important medical treatment equipment for epidemic prevention and control.

・ A research team from Westlake Institute for Advanced Study published an article in the journal Science, titled "Structural Basis for the Recognition of the SARS-CoV-2 by Full-Length Human ACE2", which successfully analyzed for the first time the full-length three-dimensional structure of ACE2, the cellular receptor for the new coronavirus.

・ Experts from China CDC participated in a COVID-19 response teleconference by the WHO's Global Preparedness Monitoring Board.

・ Zhong Nanshan held a video conference with head of the European Respiratory Society to introduce China's anti-epidemic achievements and experience.

March 5

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on COVID-19 response work, ordering more targeted and effective prevention and control measures, demanding the implementation of solid measures to care for the medical personnel fighting on the frontline against COVID-19, and urging efforts to better guarantee the minimum living standard for those people in need.

・ China's foreign ministry and NHC held a video conference with health experts from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Turkmenistan and the secretariat of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to share China's anti-epidemic experience.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Beijing on international cooperation in combating the COVID-19 outbreak.

An NHC official told the press conference that China had conducted multiple exchanges with the heads of international and regional organizations such as the WHO and health departments of relevant countries, and received a special visit of Egypt's Minister of Health and Population, the special envoy of Egyptian President.

China has timely shared with the world the whole gene sequence, primers and probes of the coronavirus, and shared diagnosis and treatment guidelines and other technical documents with more than 100 countries and over 10 international and regional organizations around the world, said the official.

China has also carried out timely technical exchanges with international and regional organizations, such as the WHO, ASEAN and APEC, as well as Japan, Russia, Germany, the United States and other countries through expert discussions and teleconferences to share China's epidemic prevention and control experience and guidelines, said the official.

An official with Chinese foreign ministry introduced China's international cooperation in fighting the COVID-19 outbreak and answered questions from reporters.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the COVID-19 epidemic.

・ As revealed by the NHC at the press conference, two imported cases of novel coronavirus infection were reported on the Chinese mainland on March 4, bringing the accumulated number of imported cases to 20.

From March 5, China began reporting on a daily basis the newly imported COVID-19 cases on the previous day and the total imported cases from overseas.

・ A joint research team from Southern University of Science and Technology and the Third People's Hospital of Shenzhen published an article on bioRxiv, titled "Viral Architecture of SARS-CoV-2 with Post-Fusion Spike Revealed by Cryo-EM", revealing the overall structure of the novel coronavirus.

March 6

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended a symposium on securing a decisive victory in poverty alleviation in Beijing and made an important speech. Xi urged Party committees and governments at all levels to advance the fight against poverty in greater determination and intensity, overcome the impact of the COVID-19 to clinch a complete victory in eradicating poverty and accomplish the great cause that is of tremendous importance both for the Chinese nation and humanity. Xi's speech was published in full text on the same day.

・ China shared with ASEAN, Japan, ROK, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, EU and other countries and regions videos of press conferences of China's clinical experts.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Hubei Province on the progress of the prevention, control, and treatment of COVID-19.

"We made public the information of epidemic prevention and control timely to let the society see the truth," said Ding Xiangyang, deputy secretary-general of the State Council.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the latest situation of COVID-19 scientific and technological research and development.

・ NHC spokesperson told the press that among 17 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported on March 5 on the Chinese mainland, 16 cases were imported from outside the mainland, warning that China faces rising risk of imported COVID-19 cases.

・ China will continue to deepen international cooperation, timely share information and experience with the WHO and relevant countries, and jointly fight the epidemic, the spokesperson said.

・ The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson answered questions of reporters, addressing some media's claim that the novel coronavirus is "made in China."

・ According to the spokesperson, the traceability of the virus is still in progress. "Though the first case of COVID-19 was detected in China, it does not necessarily mean that it originated from China. We should jointly oppose 'information virus' and 'political virus.'"

March 7

・ The NHC released the sixth version of guidelines on the prevention and control of COVID-19.

・ A Chinese medical team dispatched by the Red Cross Society of China arrived in Iraq, carrying China-aided COVID-19 prevention supplies.

・ China's NHC shared with Chile the latest version of the guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 and other technical information, expressing its willingness to conduct technical exchanges online. The commission also shared with key countries and regions the English version of the seventh version of the diagnosis and treatment guidelines.

・ China announced a donation of 20 million U.S. dollars to the WHO to support its international cooperation in the fight against COVID-19.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Wuhan City at which members of the guidance group sent by the CPC Central Committee introduced the progress of the COVID-19 prevention and treatment.

March 8

・ The NHC released a manual on prevention and control of COVID-19 for rural residents, which provides guidance and help for them to understand, prevent and control the coronavirus, and improve their self-prevention awareness and personal protection.

・ The NHC instructed medical teams aiding foreign countries to carry out capacity-building in local areas, hold online training on the COVID-19 prevention and control for these teams, along with exercises on the epidemic prevention and control for the medical teams aiding Mozambique, Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone.

March 9

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the COVID-19 response work, making arrangements for deepening international cooperation on epidemic prevention and control, curbing the cross-border spread of the epidemic and pushing for substantial results in relevant work.

・ Chen Zhu, vice chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee and head of the Red Cross Society of China, held a China-Italy video seminar on the COVID-19 prevention and control at the emergency command center of the China CDC.

・ A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at a routine press conference in Beijing that while overcoming its own difficulties, China is willing to provide masks and other medical protection materials to relevant countries to support them in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic and jointly deal with and eventually win the battle.

March 10

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, went to Wuhan to inspect the prevention and control work at the critical moment of fighting COVID-19.

Xi stressed that the epidemic prevention and control situation in Hubei and Wuhan has seen positive changes and achieved important results in stages through hard work, but the task of the epidemic prevention and control remains arduous.

Xi pointed out that the public must keep a clear mind and be more cautious at this moment, making persistent efforts and great achievements and continuing to take the epidemic prevention and control as the current top priority and the most important work.

Xi also stressed that the whole country must not be careless or weary, and should pay close attention to all kinds of prevention and control work to resolutely win the battles against the coronavirus in Hubei and Wuhan.

Xi's speech was published by the Qiushi Journal in its seventh issue of 2020.

・ China's NHC and the foreign ministry held a TV and telephone conference with 10 South Pacific island countries to exchange the COVID-19 prevention and control technologies, organized experts to introduce China's prevention and control measures and phased achievements, shared disease information, prevention and control experience, and addressed foreign concerns.

・ The NHC recommended experts to participate in the formulation of the WHO gene sequencing guidelines.

March 11

・ The NHC and the foreign ministry jointly held the third China-EU teleconference on the exchange of the COVID-19 prevention and control technologies.

・ The NHC coordinated experts to attend the WHO's conference in America to introduce China's experience in the COVID-19 prevention and control.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the COVID-19 epidemic.

As revealed at the press conference, China has seen the daily number of newly confirmed cases and newly suspected cases of COVID-19 ease to double-digit for five consecutive days. Apart from Wuhan, there were two newly confirmed cases in the last five days in China. The overall epidemic situation remained at a relatively low level and the prevention and control situation continued to improve.

However, there are still a large number of confirmed cases in Hubei and Wuhan, and the task of the epidemic prevention and control remains arduous. The rapid development of epidemic abroad also brings uncertainties, according to the press conference.

・ A research team from the China CDC published a paper in the JAMA network, titled "Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in Different Types of Clinical Specimens", discovering the cytokine change map and prognosis rule in patients infected with COVID-19 for the first time.

・ Experts from the China CDC were invited to attend 2020 online Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections organized by the International Antiviral Society-USA.

March 12

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at request, stressing that the hard work of the Chinese people has bought precious time and made important contributions to the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic in countries in the world.

Xi noted that China is willing to share its prevention and control experience with relevant countries, carry out joint research and development of drugs and vaccines, and is providing assistance to some countries where the epidemic has spread.

Xi said China supports the UN and the WHO in mobilizing the international community to strengthen policy coordination and increase resource investment, especially to help developing countries with weak public health systems to prepare for prevention and response.

Xi also said China has announced a donation of 20 million U.S. dollars to the WHO to support its international efforts to combat the epidemic.

Xi stressed that the international community should step up its efforts to effectively carry out international cooperation in joint prevention and control, so as to pool strong synergy in the fight against the epidemic; and that the international community must foster a sense of community with a shared future for mankind, support each other, work together to deal with risks and challenges and build a better planet.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on COVID-19 response work, calling for better region-and category-based measures to prevent and control the COVID-19, ensure supplies according to the changing epidemic situation, and taking more precise and targeted measures to guard against imported and exported cases of infection across the border.

・ The Second Sherpa Meeting of the G20 Riyadh Summit was held in Saudi Arabia, to discuss COVID-19 and its impact on people worldwide and the global economy. A special statement by the sherpas (personal representatives) of the leaders of the G20 on international response to the coronavirus pandemic was issued after the meeting.

・ Heads of China, Japan and ROK CDCs held a conference call on the COVID-19 prevention and control technologies, during which the three parties introduced the current situation of the epidemic prevention and control in their respective countries and exchanged views on specific technical issues.

・ China and the WHO held an international briefing via video chat in Beijing on China's experience in preventing and controlling COVID-19. Representatives of relevant countries' embassies in China and international organizations attended the briefing. Representatives of the WHO Western Pacific Region and relevant countries attended the meeting remotely via video chat.

China and the WHO jointly released the latest English versions of the diagnosis and treatment guidelines and prevention and control guidelines at the briefing.

・ The first batch of Chinese medical experts carrying China-assisted medical supplies arrived in Italy to help with its epidemic prevention and control efforts.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the COVID-19, saying the epidemic peak in China has passed as a whole, with the number of new cases declining continuously, and the epidemic situation remaining at a relatively low level.

・ A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that China and Europe have maintained close communication and cooperation since the COVID-19 outbreak, and that China's NHC and CDC have set up a special joint expert group to deal with the epidemic with the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety and the ECDC.

March 13

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping sent messages to the European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, extending sincere sympathies to the EU and the people in all its member countries over the recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease.

China firmly supports the European side in combating the COVID-19 epidemic. China is willing to provide assistance to help the European side win the fight against the epidemic at an early date. Upholding the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind, China stands ready to strengthen coordination and cooperation with the European side within bilateral and international frameworks to jointly safeguard global and regional public health security and protect the lives and health of people of both sides and in other countries around the world, Xi said.

・ China and the ROK established a joint prevention and control cooperation mechanism to deal with the epidemic and held the first video conference.

Led by the foreign ministries of these two countries, with the participation of health, education, customs, immigration, civil aviation and other departments, the mechanism aims to implement the important consensus of the heads of these two countries, strengthen communication and coordination between the two sides, carry out joint prevention and control, overcome the epidemic jointly, improve the health and well-being of these two countries' people, and safeguard and promote bilateral exchanges and cooperation.

・ China and 17 central and eastern European countries (CEEC) held a video conference of experts on the COVID-19 prevention and control, during which officials of the China's foreign ministry, NHC, and Chinese experts in disease control, civil aviation, customs and other fields shared information on the fight against the epidemic and exchanging prevention and control experience with government officials and experts from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia and Czech Republic and other CEEC members.

・ Experts from University of Science and Technology of China and its first affiliated hospital published an article, titled "Pathogenic T cells and inflammatory storm in severe COVID-19 patients."

March 14

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping recently sent a message of sympathy to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, expressing sincere sympathies on behalf of the Chinese government and people to the Italian government and people on the recent COVID-19 epidemic in Italy.

Xi stressed that the Chinese government and its people firmly support Italy's fight against the COVID-19 outbreak at this difficult time, and China is willing to cooperate with Italy and offer assistance.

Xi noted that mankind is a community with a shared future and that only through unity and coordination can humanity tackle various global risks and challenges.

Xi said as long as the two countries and the broader international community make joint efforts, they will certainly overcome the current difficulties and prevail over the epidemic at an early date, so as to protect the well-being of people in both countries and across the world.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping recently sent a message of sympathy to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, expressing heartfelt sympathies on behalf of the Chinese government and people to the Iranian government and people over the epidemic.

Xi noted that the Iranian government and people have provided sincere and friendly support and help for China's fight against the epidemic.

Meanwhile, to help Iran beat the disease, China has offered Iran a batch of anti-epidemic supplies and sent a team of voluntary health experts, Xi said.

Xi stressed that China stands ready to step up cooperation with Iran to contain the epidemic and will continue to provide as much assistance as it can for Iran in the latter's fight against the COVID-19 outbreak, adding he is confident that the Iranian government and people will surely win the battle against the outbreak.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping recently sent a message of sympathy to President of the Republic of Korea Moon Jae-in, expressing heartfelt sympathies on behalf of the Chinese government and people to the ROK government and people in ROK over the epidemic.

Xi noted that epidemics know no borders, and all countries worldwide are part of a community with a shared future, and the Chinese government and people empathize with the ROK in its struggle against the epidemic and related difficulties.

Xi said China will continue to provide as much assistance as it can to the ROK to support the latter's fight against the COVID-19 outbreak, the Chinese side stands ready to join hands with the ROK to win the fight against the epidemic at an early date, so as to protect the lives and health of the people of the two countries and the wider world.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the COVID-19 epidemic risk categorization, saying the vast majority of counties on the Chinese mainland have been thus far low-risk through the monitoring of high, medium and low-risk counties. Relevant provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have published lists of high, medium and low-risk counties.

March 15

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing saying all the new local confirmed cases of COVID-19 came from Wuhan.

As revealed at the press conference, no new local confirmed cases have been reported in cities other than Wuhan for 10 consecutive days. The number of local new confirmed cases in provinces other than Hubei has been in single-digit since Feb. 27 and zero new local confirmed cases has been reported for three consecutive days.

March 16

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Giuseppe Conte, Italian Prime Minister at request. Xi pointed out that China is willing to work with Italy to contribute to international cooperation in fighting the epidemic and building a "healthy Silk Road," believing that the traditional friendship and mutual trust will be further deepened and the all-round cooperation between China and Italy will usher in a broader prospect through this joint fight against the epidemic.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on COVID-19 response work, making further arrangements to improve prevention and control measures and speed up work and manufacturing resumption in all aspects and restore normal economic and social order.

・ The State Council Information Office held press conferences in English simultaneously in Beijing and Wuhan. Experts from the medical team of Peking Union Medical College Hospital aiding Hubei answered questions from foreign media on issues related to the treatment of COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Hubei on the scientific treatment of COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing about the prevention and control measures China adopted according to law to guard against imported COVID-19 cases.

March 17

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Pakistani President Arif Alvi in Beijing, noting that the COVID-19 epidemic is erupting in many places around the world at present, and all countries should join hands to fight the epidemic.

Upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, China has timely released the epidemic information and shared prevention and treatment experience openly, transparently and responsibly, Xi said, adding China is willing to make more contributions to prevent the spread of the epidemic worldwide and will continue to provide support and assistance to Pakistan.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at request, stressing that China's prevention and control measures have achieved positive results and have stepped out of the most difficult and most arduous stage through the hard work of the whole country.

Xi said as the epidemic has spread in many countries, China is willing to carry out international cooperation with other countries and provide assistance within its capabilities.

Xi hoped that the international community will work together to turn crises into opportunities, resist the impact of the epidemic with open and cooperative practical actions, and jointly safeguard international health security.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing to introduce the latest research and development of vaccines and detection reagents.

・ China, Japan, and the ROK held a teleconference among heads of their COVID-19 response departments. The three parties introduced the epidemic situation and measures in their respective countries and exchanged in-depth views on strengthening cooperation in the epidemic prevention and control. They believed that they should jointly prevent the spread of the epidemic and strengthen joint prevention and control.

・ China began supplying 14 kinds of domestic test kits to 11 countries, with the first batch of test kits donated by China to Cambodia arrived in Phnom Penh.

March 18

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to analyze the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control as well as the economy at home and abroad, and make arrangements for coordinating the epidemic prevention and control with key work of economic and social development.

Xi urged closer cooperation with the international community on epidemic prevention and control, stressing China will keep its close cooperation with the WHO to strengthen the analysis and prediction of the changes in the global epidemic situation, improve strategies and policies to cope with imported risks, boost exchanges and cooperation with other countries on epidemic response, and continue to offer assistance to the best of China's ability.

・ Chinese Premier Li Keqiang talked over phone with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, saying under the current circumstances, China stands firmly with the EU and supports its anti-epidemic efforts.

Li said China will facilitate its procurement of medical supplies through commercial channels, adding that China is also ready to actively carry out international cooperation to jointly protect the health of the humankind.

・ Chinese Premier Li Keqiang spoke over phone with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov at request.

Li said China is willing to enhance exchanges of anti-epidemic experience with Bulgaria, provide assistance within China's capability to help it contain the spread of COVID-19, and provide necessary facilitation to the Bulgarian side in its procurement of medical supplies through commercial channels.

・ The second group of Chinese medical experts arrived in Italy, carrying nine tonnes of medical supplies donated by China, including ventilators, infusion pumps, monitors and testing reagents.

・ China and Africa held a video conference on COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. Attendees of the online meeting were about 300 officials, health experts from 24 African countries, including health ministers from Ethiopia, Kenya and Liberia, and WHO representatives in some countries.

・ China and Mongolia held a video meeting on the COVID-19 epidemic, at which China shared its anti-epidemic technologies and experience in epidemic prevention and control, had in-depth exchanges in epidemic situation, prevention and control measures, screening and diagnosis, and treatment guidelines.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing announcing that Chinese mainland reported for the first time on March 17 no new suspected domestic cases of COVID-19. Hubei Province had seen no new confirmed cases for 13 consecutive days in cities and prefectures outside Wuhan.

・ Zhong Nanshan said at a press conference in Guangzhou that China has proved the effectiveness of containment measures in high outbreak regions and public prevention and control measures in other regions.

March 19

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke over phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin at request, reaffirming that China stands ready to work with Russia and other countries to step up international cooperation against the COVID-19 epidemic for the vision to build a community with a shared future for humanity.

Xi called for closer international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control, experience sharing on containment and treatment, and facilitation of joint research, to cope with the common threat and challenge, and safeguard global public health security.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the COVID-19 epidemic response, making arrangements to optimize prevention and control measures, precisely curb cross-border transmission of COVID-19, and actively promote the orderly resumption of work and production.

・ An inspection team of the National Supervisory Commission released the report of an investigation into issues related to doctor Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist with the Central Hospital of Wuhan. Following the report, Wuhan Public Security Bureau decided to revoke the previous reprimand letter and apologized to Li's family over the mistake.

・ China's foreign ministry and NHC jointly held a China-Europe video meeting with 18 European countries including Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, introducing China's experience of COVID-19 outbreak prevention and control for European officials and medical specialists.

・ The NHC held a meeting with the Embassy of Japan in China to exchange views in building clinical and epidemic prevention mechanism of joint response to COVID-19 epidemic.

Shanghai Municipal Health Commission and Health Commission of Anhui Province held video meetings with specialists from Costa Rica and South Sudan, respectively, to exchange on epidemic prevention and control.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing saying that no new confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases were reported for the first time on the Chinese mainland on March 18.

No new death was reported outside Hubei Province, and the number of severe cases dropped by two. No new confirmed local cases had been reported outside Hubei on the Chinese mainland for seven consecutive days, as revealed by the press conference.

The risk of imported COVID-19 cases was on the rise due to the rapid spread of the epidemic globally, thus the task to prevent imported risk must be implemented, according to the press conference.

・ Specialists from the China CDC participated in a teleconference with the WHO and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) to introduce China's experience on COVID-19 prevention and control.

・ Zhong Nanshan attended an international sharing and exchange meeting on epidemic prevention and control experience, calling for high attention to 100 the spread of novel coronavirus in a number of countries, saying it's crucial to carry out early detection, early quarantine, early diagnosis and early treatment to control the epidemic.

March 20

・ Upon the initiative of China, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a special video conference on COVID-19 with ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi. They had an in-depth exchange of views on joint response to the epidemic.

・ China's NHC and foreign ministry held a video meeting with 19 countries from Europe and Asia to provide a platform for specialists to exchange and share technologies for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing, announcing that no new confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases were reported on the Chinese mainland on March 19. It was the first time of such zero report on the Chinese mainland since it started the nationwide battle against the coronavirus.

・ Specialists from the China CDC attended a teleconference organized by the WHO on COVID-19 vaccine research.

March 21

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping recently sent a message of sympathy to Spanish King Felipe VI, expressing sincere sympathies on behalf of the Chinese government and people to the Spanish government and people over the recent COVID-19 outbreak in Spain.

Xi noted that China firmly supports Spain's efforts and measures in fighting the epidemic, and stands ready to share prevention and control experience as well as diagnostic and treatment guidelines, and provide assistance and support within its capacity.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping recently sent a message of sympathy to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, expressing sincere sympathies on behalf of the Chinese government and people to the Serbian government and people over the recent COVID-19 outbreak in Serbia.

Xi stressed that China firmly supports Serbia's efforts against the epidemic, and will provide Serbia with assistance in protective equipment and medical instruments, and help it purchase urgently needed supplies in China.

China will also send a group of medical experts to help it better contain the COVID-19 epidemic, so as to protect the life, health and well-being of the Serbian people.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping recently sent a message of sympathy to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, stressing China firmly supports Germany's endeavor in combating the epidemic and is willing to provide assistance within its capacity if there is a need from the German side.

Xi noted by upholding the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, China stands ready to continue sharing information and experience with Germany, and strengthening cooperation in such areas as epidemic prevention and control, treatment of patients, and vaccine research and development, so as to jointly protect the health and well-being of people not only in both countries but in the rest of the world.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping recently sent a message of sympathy to French President Emmanuel Macron, noting the Chinese government and people firmly support France's efforts against the COVID-19 epidemic, and stand ready to boost cooperation with France and jointly win the battle through mutual support and help.

Xi said China is willing to make concerted efforts with France to enhance international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control, support the UN and the WHO playing a core role in improving global public health governance, and build a community of common health for mankind.

March 22

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing underscoring the importance of implementing prevention and control measures in quarantine, transfer, treatment and isolation to curb the imported COVID-19 cases as the pandemic is affecting more than 180 countries and regions.

・ A Chinese medical team carrying ventilators, medical masks, test kits and other medical materials arrived in Serbian to help it battle the novel coronavirus.

March 23

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with French President Emmanuel Macron, introducing upon request the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control in China.

Xi stressed both China and France shoulder the arduous responsibility of safeguarding international and regional public health security, suggesting that both countries carry out sincere cooperation to promote joint research programs, strengthen cooperation in frontier health and quarantine inspection, support the work of the WHO, jointly help African countries enhance epidemic prevention and control, and strive to build a community of common health.

Xi said China stands ready to work with France to encourage all relevant parties to step up coordination and cooperation within such frameworks as the UN and G20, engage in joint prevention and containment, improve global health governance, help developing countries and other countries in need with capacity-building, and cushion the epidemic's impact on the world economy.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, noting facts have shown once again that mankind is a community that shares weal and woe. All countries must unite and work together to jointly cope with the COVID-19 epidemic.

Xi said by upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, China will work with other countries to step up international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control, jointly address common threats and challenges, and safeguard global public health security.

Noting that Egypt is also facing the urgent task of battling the epidemic, Xi said China is willing to share with Egypt the epidemic-related information, experience on prevention and treatment, and medical research results, and provide it with medical supplies to support its prevention and control efforts to jointly beat the disease.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, introducing upon request China's epidemic prevention and control measures. Xi stressed that China hopes Britain will enhance coordination with China to minimize the risk of the epidemic's spread while ensuring necessary flow of people and trade.

Xi called on all nations to push forward cooperation within the frameworks of the UN and G20, enhance the exchange and sharing of information and experience, boost collaboration in scientific research, support the WHO in playing its due role, improve global health governance, increase macro-economic policy coordination so as to stabilize the market, maintain economic growth, safeguard people's well-being, and keep the global supply chains open, stable and safe.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee on the COVID-19 epidemic response, making arrangements to prevent imported infections and COVID-19 rebound at home according to changes in the epidemic situation, actively advance the resumption of work and production in order while keep prevention and control effective.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing, announcing Hubei Province and Wuhan City had reported zero new confirmed and suspected case for five straight days, with the number of existing confirmed cases declining continuously. A health official told the press conference that zero report of new cases does not mean there is no risk, thus it's still arduous to prevent and control the epidemic.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Hubei, introducing the importance and effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in treating COVID-19. Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering noted that TCM had remarkably reduced the proportion of patients with mild symptoms turning to severe cases.

・ A team of Chinese medical experts carrying a batch of medical materials aided by China arrived in Cambodia to help it fight the COVID-19.

March 24

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, noting that in the battle against the current global public health crisis, the urgency and significance of building a community with a shared future for humanity have become even greater. Only with solidarity and cooperation can the international community prevail over the pandemic and safeguard the planet.

Xi said China is ready to work with Kazakhstan and other countries to strengthen international cooperation against the pandemic and safeguard global public health security.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Polish President Andrzej Duda, reiterating China's firm support to the Polish government and people in combating the COVID-19 epidemic. Xi noted China had held a video conference of health experts with Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) to timely share information and relevant measures on epidemic prevention and control.

Xi said by upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, China is willing to enhance cooperation with other countries to fight the epidemic and safeguard global public health security.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at request, noting that the COVID-19 broke out in many parts of the world and was spreading rapidly and the top priority now is for countries to strengthen cooperation.

Xi said by upholding the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, and with an open, transparent and responsible attitude, China has timely released epidemic information and shared experience in prevention, control and treatment with the WHO and the international community without reserve, and doing its best to provide assistance for other parties.

Xi stressed that the international community has already recognized that China made enormous sacrifices in the fight against COVID-19 and bought precious time for the world.

・ Chinese authorities and experts interacted via a video conference with health professionals across Latin America and the Caribbean states, sharing COVID-19 prevention and control experience. Attendees were about 200 officials and experts from 25 countries and representatives from the WHO, UNICEF, Pan American Health Organization and Inter-American Development Bank.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing with disease control specialists and medical experts introducing the COVID-19 prevention, control and clinical diagnosis information. As revealed at the press conference, spreading risks of sporadic COVID-19 cases and imported cases still exist, thus the prevention and control work should not be taken lightly.

March 25

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, presided over a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to hear reports of the epidemic prevention and control and the current economic situation, and study responsive measures.

The meeting decided to submit the measures to the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee for further review.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, stressing China firmly supports Germany in its fight against the COVID-19 epidemic and is willing to continue to provide assistance within China's capacity.

Xi said that the Chinese and German experts have already had video exchanges, and German experts have also travelled to China with the WHO expert team.

Xi said China is willing to share with Germany its experience in prevention, control and treatment, strengthen cooperation in vaccine and drug research and development, and contribute to the health and well-being of both peoples and global public health security.

In the battle against the outbreak, the strength of solidarity and cooperation between China and Germany, between China and the EU, have displayed positive energy, Xi said, adding China is ready to work with Germany and other sides to step up coordination and advocate the spirit of sharing the same boat and jointly fight the epidemic, so as to shore up confidence in the international community.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing asking for efforts to strictly prevent imported infections and epidemic rebound at home.

・ A new PCR lab assisted and built by China was inaugurated in Baghdad, Iraq, to increase the testing capacity to contain COVID-19 in the war-torn country.

・ Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health plans to sign with American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences on China-led evaluation research of medicine Remdesivir.

March 26

・ Via video link in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech titled "Working Together to Defeat the COVID-19 Outbreak "at the Extraordinary G20 Leaders' Summit.

Stressing the outbreak is spreading worldwide and the situation is disturbing and unsettling, Xi said it's imperative for the international community to strengthen confidence, act with unity and work together in a collective response to win the battle against such a major infectious disease for humanity.

Guided by the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, China will be more than ready to share its good practices, provide assistance in its capacity to countries hit by the growing outbreak, and contribute to the stability of the world economy, Xi said.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote in a reply letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying China has always supported the global COVID-19 containment efforts with concrete actions, and has offered assistance to the WHO and other international organizations, as well as more than 80 countries. Xi said China will continue to provide support for the international community in combating COVID-19 epidemic.

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee COVID-19 response work, calling for strict implementation of measures to prevent the rebound of the epidemic within the country and efforts to step up measures to guard against risks of imported cases by land and water.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing announcing that 23 provincial-level regions reported confirmed imported cases of COVID-19 on March 25.

As revealed by the press conference, pressure remains huge to prevent the spread of the epidemic, and people should prepare for more persistent prevention and control efforts.

・ China's third medical team carrying ventilators, medical monitors, masks and other medical supplies arrived in Italy via chartered flight to help Italy fight the COVID-19 outbreak.

・ China held a video meeting on COVID-19 pandemic with medical experts and health officials from the West Asian and North African countries. About 200 participants from the Gulf Cooperation Council and 16 countries including Egypt, Algeria, Palestine, Lebanon, Kuwait and Qatar joined the online meeting.

・ According to the data of China International Development Cooperation Agency, China has thus far provided four batches of anti-pandemic aid for 89 countries and four international organizations, while the fifth batch of aid program was being developed.

March 27

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to analyze the COVID-19 response and economic performance.

The meeting made new arrangements on coordinating the COVID-19 response and economic and social development.

China will deepen exchange and cooperation with the WHO and continue to provide assistance within its ability to other countries, according to the meeting.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, stressing viruses respect no national borders, and only by cooperation and with a collective response can the international community prevail over them.

Xi said the G20 major economies should uphold the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, and strengthen unity, coordination and cooperation to resolutely stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and stabilize the world economy with all their strength.

Xi noted that with the king's presiding, G20 leaders successfully held an extraordinary summit on COVID-19 on March 26, and reached important consensus on fighting the pandemic in solidarity and stabilizing the world economy, which has sent a positive signal to the international community.

Xi stressed that China is ready to maintain close communication with Saudi Arabia and strengthen the momentum of G20 cooperation.

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping talked over phone with U.S. President Donald Trump at request, stressing that China has been timely sharing information on COVID-19 in an open, transparent and responsible manner with the WHO and countries including the United States since the onset of the epidemic. China, Xi said, wasted no time in releasing such information as the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, and has also been sharing experience on COVID-19 prevention, containment and treatment without reserve, and providing as much support and assistance as it can for countries in need.

Xi said China will continue to do so, and work with the international community to prevail over the pandemic.

・ Chinese Premier Li Keqiang talked over phone at request over the COVID-19 pandemic with Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, and with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, respectively.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing announcing that the number of the close contacts under medical observation had been increasing for seven consecutive days, with the number reported on March 26 jumping 78 percent than that on March 19.

The combination of emergency and normalized measures should be improved to accurately prevent and control the domestic epidemic and take strict precautions against the virus spreading.

・ China's NHC head Ma Xiaowei attended a COVID-19 pandemic information briefing held by the WHO, sharing experience of fighting against the virus and answering questions from other countries. More than 500 people from the countries like Russia, Brazil, Egypt and Qatar attended the online meeting.

March 28

・ A Chinese medical expert team carrying medical supplies arrived in Pakistan to help it fight COVID-19.

・ Invited by the European Respiratory Society, Wang Chen, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and also a medical specialist of respiratory and critical disease, attended a video connection and shared the health policies of the COVID-19 prevention and control with European physicians and health administrators.

March 29

・ Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made an inspection tour for COVID-19 control and work resumption in east China's Zhejiang Province from March 29 to April 1, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.

Xi called for the full implementation of the decisions and arrangements by the CPC Central Committee, while coordinating efforts for COVID-19 prevention and control, and economic and social development.

・ Under the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, a press conference was held in Beijing announcing that local transmission of COVID-19 has been basically blocked on the Chinese mainland, and China will continue efforts to guard against the dual risks of sporadic domestic cases and imported cases.

・ A team of Chinese medical experts carrying medical supplies, such as treatment machines, protective materials, traditional Chinese and western medicines, arrived at Laos to assist the country's fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.

March 30

・ Xinhua News Agency reported that Li Keqiang presided over a meeting of the leading group of the CPC Central Committee COVID-19 response work, urging efforts to consolidate prevention and control measures to focus on the prevention and control of cases of infections that show no symptoms.

・ The International Department of CPC Central Committee and the secretariat of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) standing committee co-hosted an online seminar about jointly fighting against the COVID-19, aiming to promote the exchange and dialogue among Asian political parties in epidemic prevention and control via online communication, and boosting experience sharing and cooperation among Asian countries.

・A team of Chinese medical and scientific experts carrying test kits, medical protective equipment, medicines and other China-donated medical supplies arrived in Caracas, capital of Venezuela, to help fight COVID-19.

・ Invited by the American College of Chest Physicians, Chinese medical experts attended a network forum of COVID-19 with their American counterparts and shared experience in fighting against the virus.

・ Upgraded by Chinese enterprises, Zimbabwe's main COVID-19 quarantine and treatment center, Wilkins Hospital, was completed and delivered to Zimbabwe.

・ China's NHC head Ma Xiaowei talked over phone with the U.S.secretary of health and human services Alex Azar on the implementation of principles agreed by the heads of state of China and the United States in a telephone conversation on March 27, sharing China's latest epidemic prevention and control situation and exchanging views for further cooperation.

March 31

・ Chinese Premier Li Keqiang talked over phone with Algerian Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad at request, saying the COVID-19 epidemic is spreading in the Middle East region and China feels keenly for it. Li said China stands firmly with Algeria, and is willing to provide support within its capacity and share its anti-virus experience.

・ Chinese Premier Li Keqiang talked over phone with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at request, saying China firmly supports Ireland's efforts in the fight against the disease, and is willing to provide Ireland with necessary assistance within its capacity. Li said China is also ready to facilitate Ireland's procurement and transportation of medical supplies from China, enhance exchanges of experience on epidemic prevention and treatment, and carry out cooperation in medical research and development.

・ The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, and answered questions about the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control, treatment of severe patients, resumption of normal medical order in the province and international cooperation of epidemic prevention and control.

・ A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a press conference in Beijing that the Chinese government had provided material assistance including medical masks, N95 masks, protective suits, nucleic acid testing reagent and ventilators to 120 countries and four international organizations.

Local governments had donated medical supplies to more than 50 countries. And the Chinese enterprises donated medical supplies to more than 100 countries and international organizations.

[bluewatsons]

Imogen Tyler, Against Abjection: violent disgust and the maternal, 10 Feminist Theory 77 (2009)

He locked me in a dog‘s cage when I was pregnant .... He jumped me in the kitchen window and pulled a knife to my throat. ... Um you know he would do so many things – like its sort of hard. He punched me. –You know like just – just normal things that um you know like made me have an abortion.... [The violence was] more or less every day (`Toni‘ in Kaye, Stubbs and Tolmie 2003: 41)

Why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history that has written such an abject script for you? (Spivak 1990: 62).

This article is about the theoretical life of `the abject‘. It focuses on the ways in which Anglo-American and Australian1 feminist theoretical accounts of maternal bodies and identities have utilised Julia Kristeva‘s theory of abjection. Whilst the abject has proved a compelling and productive concept for feminist theory, this article cautions against the reiteration of the maternal (as) abject within theoretical writing and questions the effects of what Rosalind Krauss terms  ̳the insistent spread of ―abjection‖ as an expressive mode‘ (1999:235). It contends that employing Kristeva‘s abject paradigm risks reproducing histories of violent disgust towards maternal bodies. In place of the Kristevan model of the abject, it argues for a more thoroughly social and political account of abjection. This would entail a critical shift from the current feminist preoccupation with the `transgressive potentiality` of  ̳encounters with the abject‘, to a consideration of consequences of being abject within specific social locations. By asking what it might mean to be `against abjection‘, the central aim of this article is to make an intervention into feminist debates about abjection and thus clear the way for alternative understandings and applications of this important concept to emerge..

The article begins with a critical account of Kristeva‘s theory of abjection, interrogating the matricidal premise on which it is grounded. The second part of the article details the characteristic features of the genre of feminist writing that I term  ̳abject criticism‘, focusing on how the abject has been taken up and developed as a way of addressing the disparagement of the maternal within particular theoretical traditions. It argues that the emphasis within this criticism on the subversive potential of `abject parody` fails to address either the troubling premises of Kristeva‘s theory or the social consequences of living as a body that is identified as maternal and abject. Drawing on reports, interview data and testimonies of battered pregnant women from an Internet chat room, the final section considers how disgust for the maternal body materialises in acts of daily violence against pregnant women. In the conclusion, this article calls on feminist theory to resist the compulsion to abject, in Kristeva‘s words ̳to vomit the mother‘ (1982: 47) and instead suggests that feminism might imagine ways of theorising maternal subjectivity that vigorously contest the dehumanising effects of abjection. Toril Moi and Iris Marion-Young have called for a re-centering of `lived bodily experience` within feminist theory (Moi 2001, Marion-Young 2005). Following Moi and Young this article deploys accounts of lived maternal abjection in order to expose the limitations of the Kristevan model.

The Kristevan Abject

In Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation, Winfred Menninghaus notes that:

In the 1980s, a new buzzword entered political and ... critical discourse... The word is `abjection,` and it represents the newest mutation in the theory of disgust. Oscillating, in its usage, between serving as a theoretical concept and precisely defying the order of concentual language altogether, the term `abjection` also commonly appears as both adjective (`abject women,` `abject art`) and adjective turned into a substantive (`the abject`) (2003: 365).

The emergence of the concept and theories of abjection within theoretical writing in the 1980s was driven by the publication of an English translation of Pouvoirs de l'horreur (1980) in 1982. Whilst Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection is a theoretically demanding book that assumes familiarity with psychoanalysis and philosophy, it has had an extraordinarily wide impact. Indeed, rarely has the publication of a single book been so influential across both an immense range of academic disciplines and within wider spheres of cultural production, such art curatorship and practice. One cannot underestimate the sheer amount of Anglophone academic scholarship which uses and cites Kristeva‘s theory of abjection. As Menninghaus notes, `an adequate account of the academic career of the abjection paradigm could easily fill a whole book in itself‘ (2003: 393). Whilst Kristeva‘s influence on Western thought is by no means limited to feminist theory and whilst the term `abject criticism` could be used to describe a diverse body of theoretical writing, my analysis focuses on a specific body of feminist theoretical writing (which I shall introduce shortly). The influence of Powers of Horror was largely a consequence of the way in which feminist theorists in the 1980s and 1990s appropriated the Kristevan abject, hailing it as an enabling concept for feminist research. Whilst many readers will be familiar with Kristeva‘s theory of abjection, its mass citation and oscillating usage requires that we return to her original account. This return to Kristeva is essential because it is Kristeva‘s premise of matricide (the structural requirement that the maternal functions as the primary abject) that is at the heart of my critique. For whilst Kristeva‘s theory of abjection is adapted and transformed within feminist applications, this fundamental premise is accepted and reproduced almost without question.

Powers of Horror is a theoretical account of the psychic origins and mechanisms of revulsion and disgust. Kristeva develops the concept of the abject to describe and account for temporal and spatial disruptions within the life of the subject and in particular those moments when the subject experiences a frightening loss of distinction between themselves and objects/others. The abject describes those forces, practices and things which are opposed to and unsettle the conscious ego, the  ̳I‘. It is the zone between being and non-being, `the border of my condition as a living being` (1982: 3). Kristeva also suggests that abjection can explain the structural and political acts of inclusion/exclusion which establish the foundations of social existence. She asserts that the abject has a double presence, it is both within `us` and within  ̳culture‘ and it is through both individual and group rituals of exclusion that abjection is `acted out‘. Abjection thus generates the borders of the individual and the social body. Kristeva writes of encounters with the abject: `On the edge of non-existence and hallucination of a reality that, if I acknowledge it, annihilates me. There, abject and abjection are my safe-guards. The primers of my culture`(1982: 2). As this passage suggests, for Kristeva the abject is a force which both disrupts social order and (in doing) operates as a necessary psychological  ̳safe-guard, abjection...settles the subject within a socially justified illusion—[it] is a security blanket‘ (1982: 136- 7).

Through a series of evocative accounts of abject encounters, Kristeva demonstrates that abject experiences are common within our everyday lives: you might experience an abject response when the skin that forms on top of warm milk unexpectedly touches your lips, or when you see blood, vomit or a corpse. As these examples suggest, Kristeva theorises abjection in distinctly phenomenological terms, associating the abject with all that is repulsive and fascinating about bodies and, in particular, those aspects of bodily experience which unsettle singular bodily integrity: death, decay, fluids, orifices, sex, defecation, vomiting, illness, menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth. Indeed, Kristeva primarily understands experiences of abjection in terms of bodily affect, moments of physical revulsion and disgust that result in `a discharge, a convulsion, a crying out‘ (1982: 1). What fascinates Kristeva is the jouissance of abject encounters, the exhilarating fall inwards into the monstrous depths of the narcissistic self:  ̳The sublime point at which the abject collapses in a burst of beauty that overwhelms us—and ―that cancels our existence‖‘ (1982: 210). For Kristeva, it is the act of writing and in particular the poetic texts of the avant-garde, which are most productive of abject encounters.2 The suggestive possibilities that arise from the ways in which Kristeva employs abjection as a methodological approach—an interpretive lens—for analysing cultural texts is central to the subsequent development of abject criticism.

In terms of the psychoanalytic cannon, Powers of Horror can be read as an attempt to challenge the increasing predominance of Jacques Lacan‘s work in the post-war period. Indeed, Kristeva‘s extensive work on the semiotic and the pre-symbolic stages of psycho-sexual development sets out to  ̳correct‘ Lacanian accounts by forcing attention onto the role of the maternal in the development of subjectivity. Indeed, Kristeva‘s introduction of the abject can be read as an attempt to problematize Lacan‘s famous mirror-stage theory—a startlingly  ̳mother free‘ account of the subject‘s birth into the symbolic domain. For Kristeva, the abjection of the maternal is the precondition of the narcissism of the mirror- stage. Moreover, like the mirror-stage, abjection is not a stage  ̳passed through‘ but a perpetual process that plays a central role within the project of subjectivity. Just as within Lacanian ontology all subjects are fundamentally narcissistic, so in Kristeva‘s account all subjects are fundamentally `abjecting subjects`.3 Kristeva draws heavily upon her earlier account of the semiotic when she links abjection to the earliest affective relations with the maternal body (in utero and post utero). Within the model of subjectivity she proposes, the infant‘s bodily and psychic attachment to his/her maternal origins must be successfully and violently abjected in order for an independent and cogent speaking human subject to  ̳be born‘. Any subsequent `abjections` must therefore be understood as repetitions that contain within an echo of this earlier cathartic event—the first and primary abject(ion)—birth and the human infant‘s separation from the maternal body/home. For Kristeva, abjection is thus always a reminder (and the irreducible remainder) of this primary repudiation of the maternal. As she notes, `abjection preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal relationship, in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be` (1982:10). This memory of maternal dependency is deeply etched within the bodily and psychic lives of each of us: This primary abjection is the ultimate secret violence at the heart of all human existence. As she writes, `[f]or man and for woman the loss of the mother is a biological and psychic necessity, the first step on the way to autonomy. Matricide is our vital necessity, the sine qua non condition of our individuation` (1989: 38). So whilst the abject becomes attached to different objects, bodies and things at different times and in different locations, Kristeva nevertheless makes clear that all abjections are re-enactments of this primary matricide, an act that haunts the subject `unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang‘ (1982: 1).

On a meta-theoretical level, Kristeva mobilizes the abject to enact the return of the maternal upon psychoanalysis. Indeed this focus on the role of maternal in the formation of subjectivity is one of the reasons why the abject has such a strong conceptual draw for feminist theory. However, it is crucial to note that whilst Kristeva grants the maternal a central and formative role within her theory of subjectivity—a role that not only rivals but sequentially pre-empts the Lacanian Paternal/Phallic function—she uncouples `the maternal` from any specific `maternal subjects` or from motherhood. Whilst I have employed Kristeva‘s term, `the maternal`, in my account of her theory of abjection, within her work this term has an oblique and deeply ambiguous status. Indeed, her account of the development of subjectivity is in many ways as `mother free` as Lacan‘s.

The concept of the maternal evoked in Kristeva's writing is akin to a `subtext`, the fleshy underside of the phallic symbolic, as the Australian philosopher Michelle Boulous Walker states it/she barely surfaces `to the level of critical thought‘ (1998: 113). It remains patently unclear what, if any, relationship there is between this abstract maternal and actual maternal subjects. As Boulous Walker argues `even though much of her work focuses on the maternal `it is not clear that Kristeva‘s maternal is a category that has much to do with women‘ (1998: 125). Indeed the fundamental premise of the Kristevan abject is that there is and can be no maternal subject. She argues for example, that although women undoubtedly experience pregnancy, there is no pregnant subject:  ̳no one is present [...] to signify what is going on. ―It happens, but I‘m not there.‖ ―I cannot realise it, but it goes on.‖ Motherhood‘s impossible syllogism‘ (1993: 237). This claim begs the question of which (and whose) interests are served through loyal adherence to the argument that matricide and the accompanying taboo on maternal subjectivity is the  ̳primary mytheme‘ of culture (Jacqueline Rose, 1993: 52). Might we question this foundational matricide, at least in this universalistic formulation?4 For, as Judith Butler states: `what Kristeva claims to discover in the prediscursive maternal body is itself a production of a given historical discourse, an effect of culture rather than its secret and primary cause‘ (1999: 103). Feminist theory needs to ascertain what the structural and conceptual limits of the Kristevan abject are and the extent to which the abject is an enabling concept for theorising maternal subjectivity.

Abject Criticism

Kristeva‘s theory of abjection has had an extraordinary influence on feminist theory. However, it is important to note that whilst Kristeva is frequently introduced in Anglo-feminist theoretical writing as a `French Feminist` she is neither French in origin nor a feminist. Not only has Kristeva never identified herself as a feminist, she has never aligned her work with any larger feminist theoretical or philosophical project, on the contrary, she has repeatedly distanced herself from feminism. As Christine Delphy argues, it is Anglo-feminist theorists who invented ―French feminism‖ (1995). The fact that Kristeva is still frequently celebrated as one of the leading feminist theorists of our time is perplexing. Whilst many philosophical and psychoanalytic concepts have been developed by feminist theorists in ways that are distinct from and even work against their original context and/or intention, rarely has a concept as influential as abjection been consistently misrecognised as feminist in origin. This raises questions about how we should interpret Kristeva‘s theory of abjection. If ―French feminism‖ is an Anglo-feminist invention then in what senses is  ̳the abject‘, as it circulates within feminist theory, similarly an Anglo-feminist concept/invention? Certainly the idea that the abject is something that can be represented (or even deliberately created, as in  ̳abject art‘) would be nonsensical in Kristeva‘s account, where the abject is resolutely prior to and in excess of language and meaning. However, whilst there is significant deviation from Kristeva in feminist revisions of abjection, with a few notable exceptions5, Anglo-feminists not only consistently promotes Kristeva‘s theory of abjection as `a feminist theory` but have remained peculiarly obedient to the matricidal logic of her account.

The Anglo-feminist theory that advances the abject maternal falls into two main genres: theoretical and philosophical exegesis of Kristeva‘s theory of abjection and a body of literature that applies her theory of abjection to specific areas of cultural production. I shall focus on the latter and, in particular, on the development of the abject as an interpretive approach to the analysis of popular culture, art and cinema. As abject criticism developed in the 1990s, theories of the `maternal abject` began to appear in a series of conceptual guises: `the abject mother‘ (Oliver 1993, Bousfield 2000),  ̳the monstrous feminine‘ (Creed 1993, Braidotti 1994, Constable 1999, Gear 2001, Betterton 1996 and 2006, Shildrich 2002) `the monstrous womb` (Creed 1993), `the archaic mother` (Creed 1993) and  ̳the female grotesque‘ (Tamblyn 1990, Yaegar 1992, Russo 1994). What characterizes these feminist mobilisations of Kristeva‘s abject maternal is a concern with theorising and identifying the maternal (and feminine) body as primary site/sight of cultural disgust. Whilst Kristeva analysed the social and cathartic function of art and literature in order to ascertain what it reveals about human psychic development per se, this criticism is motivated by more immediate socio-political questions. In particular, it seeks out instances of the abject maternal within culture in order to explore, challenge, and in some instances,  ̳reclaim‘ misogynistic depictions of women as abject. What makes the `abject paradigm` particularly compelling for feminist theorists is the promise that `reading for the abject` within specific cultural domains can challenge and/or displace the disciplinary norms that frame dominant representations of gender. Indeed, what this theory shares is a political hope that  ̳cultural representations of abjection‘ (Covino, 2004:4) can be read against the grain in ways that will destabilise and/or subvert misogynistic representations of women. In contradistinction to Kristeva, for whom the abject is formless, pre-symbolic and un-representable, feminist theorists thus imagine the practice of abject criticism as variously exposing, disrupting and/or transcoding the historical and cultural associations between women‘s bodies, reproduction and the abject.

One of the most influential texts of abject criticism is Creed‘s The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1993). Indeed, The Monstrous-Feminine is frequently cited as evidence of the purchase of Kristeva‘s theory of abjection. This book analyses a genre which repeatedly produces maternal bodies as abject—horror film—and employs close analysis to expose the violent gendered codes of abjection. In a chapter entitled,  ̳Woman as Monstrous Womb‘ Creed cites Kristeva to argue that `the womb represents the utmost in abjection‘ (1993:49). To support this claim, she offers examples from a cycle of Hollywood horror films, such as The Brood (dir., David Cronenberg 1979) in which the sight/site of horror is a massive womb on the outside of the woman‘s body, The Manitou (dir., William Girdler 1978), in which a womb `appears as a displaced tumour growing on a woman‘s neck‘ and Aliens (dir., James Cameron 1986) in which the spectator is confronted with the site of an Alien womb, externalised in the form of a deathly birth chamber of awe-inspiring proportions. Echoing Kristeva‘s claim that every encounter with the abject is a re-enactment of a primary maternal abjection, Creed‘s central thesis is that  ̳every encounter with horror, in the cinema, is an encounter with the maternal body‘ (1993: 166). The narrative structure of these films, in which the maternal other is variously expelled/destroyed/punished, thus enables the audience to pleasurably and safely  ̳act-out‘ abjection. Indeed, Creed suggests that horror films offer their audiences psychic relief/resolution in the form of an intense  ̳abject fix‘ which temporarily sates the raging primal need to endlessly destroy the maternal other to whom we are in bondage. She writes:

The central ideological project of the popular horror film [is] purification of the abject through a  ̳descent into the foundations of the symbolic construct‘. The horror film attempts to bring about a confrontation with the abject ... in order finally to eject the abject and redraw the boundaries between the human and non-human. As a modern form of defilement rite, the horror film attempts to separate out the symbolic order from all that threatens its stability, particularly the mother and all that her universe signifies. In this sense signifying horror involves a representation of, and reconciliation with, the maternal body (15).

Creed understands horror film as akin to the purification rituals described by anthropologists such Mary Douglas (1966), whose study of the social role of defilement rituals is central to Kristeva‘s account of the cathartic function of art and religion. Creed thus not only employs Kristeva‘s account but furnishes her theory of maternal abjection with new cultural evidence. Creed proposes that the primary value of this application of abject theory is that it enables  ̳a more accurate picture of the fears and fantasies that dominate our cultural imaginary‘ (166). Indeed, she argues that the exposure of the monstrous-feminine at the dark heart of film,  ̳art, poetry, pornography and other popular fictions‘ unveils  ̳the origins of patriarchy‘ (1993: 164). Creed also suggests that the abject representations of the maternal as alien and monstrous can be redeployed to communicate  ̳real‘ maternal desire.

Kristeva argues that the abject is a force which disrupts the social world in order to secure social norms, including those of gender. Any  ̳transgression‘ functions to reinstate those norms: for example, by providing opportunities for punishment and the enforcement of psychic and social laws. Creed similarly acknowledges that  ̳images which seek to define woman as monstrous in relation to her reproductive functions‘ ultimately work `to reinforce the phallocratic notion that female sexuality is abject‘ (151). Indeed, Creed‘s analysis reveals that the exhilarating encounters with the abject maternal proffered by horror cinema function to secure and authorise the (male) spectator through the violent punishment of the maternal other—therein lies the central pleasures of this genre. However, in a reversal of Kristeva‘s argument, Creed further suggests that mapping the pejorative associations between the maternal and the abject can offer feminism resources with which to challenge the misogyny which underlies these cultural inscriptions Menninghaus argues that this genre of abject criticism is underpinned by an affirmative logic in which what is  ̳officially considered abject‘ is provocatively embraced as a  ̳positive alterity‘ in order to challenge the legitimacy of discrimination (2003: 366) He quotes art theorist and curator Simon Taylor who states that:  ̳I do not claim that the abject gives us access to radical exteriority, merely that its invocation, under certain historical circumstances, can be used to renegotiate social relations in a contestary fashion‘ (Taylor in Menninghaus, 200: 389). This affirmative logic, and specifically the idea that the maternal abject can be positively embraced as a means of challenging  ̳the inadequacy‘ of psychoanalysis is central to Creed‘s project. However, throughout The Monstrous-Feminine it is assumed that Kristeva‘s theory of abjection poses a useful feminist challenge to psychoanalytic orthodoxy. Creed fails to critically engage with Kristeva or question her account of maternal abjection. Indeed, Creed‘s repetition and application of Kristeva‘s claims risks affirming the universalism of this deeply problematic psychoanalytic account by furnishing the theory with empirical evidence—the maternal is monstrous.

In The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity (1994), literary theorist Mary Russo warns that the risk of this affirmative abjection is precisely that it might reproduce rather than challenge the cultural production of women as abject. However, Russo, like Creed, Taylor and many others, is also hopeful about the political potential of abject criticism. As she notes, ` [the] extreme difficulty of producing social change does not diminish the usefulness of these symbolic models of transgression‘ (1994: 58). This argument depends upon a belief in the transformative potential of parody and Russo draws on the work of Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to support her claim that parody can effect social change. In  ̳Abject Criticism‘ (2000) Deborah Caslav Covino summarises this belief in the transgressive potential of `abject parody`. She argues that within abject criticism:

the abject woman becomes a subversive trope of female liberation: she speaks an alternative, disruptive language, immersing herself in the significances of the flesh, becoming wilfully monstrous as she defies the symbolic order (2000)

Covino defines abject criticism as `a movement that marks a departure from  ̳traditional aesthetics‘ which has informed `significant feminist typologies` and has proved `a triumph for women`. This representation of the work of mapping abjection as feminist work is a recurrent theme within this genre of criticism to the extent that being for the abject is imagined as a form of political practice. As Covino writes:

A focus on shared abjection [...] allows us to continue to historicize and confront constructions of woman as objectified, mortified flesh, as well as to qualify our inspired hopes of throwing off such flesh; it allows us to read the burden of women's greater share of abjection [and] the subversive woman's desire to inhabit alternative bodies and spaces (2000).

I want to question the transformative potential of abject criticism, namely, the idea that affirming representations of abjection `can be used to renegotiate social relations in a contestary fashion‘ (Taylor in Menninghaus, 2006: 389). Not all theorists of abjection are as effusive as Covino in embracing the logic of `affirmative abjection`, nevertheless many have been persuaded by the feminist possibilities of abject criticism. The following quotation from art theorist and performance artist Joanna Frueh details the ways in which a typology of the abject maternal has taken root within feminist theory in the way Covino suggests:

Julia Kristeva‘s Powers of Horror ... has greatly influenced feminist theorizing of the body. Here the mother (-to-be) epitomizes abjectness: she enlarges, looks swollen, produces afterbirth, lactates, and shrinks; she is beyond the bounds of even normal female flesh and bleeding; she is breakdown, dissolution, ooze, and magnificent grossness. The mother is perfectly grotesque, a psychic monument to the queasy slipperiness that is the liminal reality of human embodiment (2001: 133).

Freuh‘s description highlights how abject criticism plunders and exaggerates the abject characteristics associated with maternal bodies in order to challenge the negativity of being aligned with the abject. The mother is now  ̳magnificent‘ in her  ̳grossness‘. However, whilst this strategic repetition and mimicry focuses on the  ̳disruptive authority‘ of the `monstrous maternal‘, the feminist theorists engaged in this critical work reproduce some of the most repulsive, pornographic, obscene and violent representations of the maternal. These accounts rarely question the underlying premises of Kristeva‘s theory: Namely that this  ̳mother‘ cannot exist as a subject in her own right but only as the subjects perpetual other, that  ̳liminal reality of human embodiment‘. We need to consider what the risks of this strategic repetition are in terms of cementing phantasies of the maternal as necessarily abject and think about what impact this figuration of the maternal has on those subsequently interpellated as that abject. As Frueh argues,  ̳the abject mother is an imaginary figure, but as such she assumes an iconic presence that women may use against themselves‘ in forms of ―intergenerational corporeal warfare‖‘ (2001: 133).

Interestingly it is not individual maternal bodies and beings per se that are most often identified as abject within feminist analysis of literature, art and film. For example, in the films cited by Creed, it is not the maternal body per se but rather the representation of dismembered reproductive body parts (and in particular the disembodied womb), which are imagined as `the scene of horror‘ (1993: 49). As queer theorist Judith Halberstam argues, it is the deconstruction of women into her messiest and most slippery parts, images of the reproductive body grotesquely unravelled, which constitute the maternal (as) monstrous (1995: 52). As Halberstam notes:  ̳The female monster is a pile of remains, the leftover material ... she does not signify in her own body the power of horror‘(52). In other words, it is only `once a woman has ... been stripped of all signs of identity` that she is reduced to a shapeless, bloody abject mass (47). It is when the maternal is no longer recognisable as a body and thus as a subject that it/she becomes abject. It is a subject-less maternal that is the sight/site of collective psycho-social disgust. What is crucial about this insight is that it reveals how maternal bodies are made disgusting through violent disassembling. The maternal can only be produced as a site of horror through representational practices which figure `her` as in excess of a singular body/identity. Indeed, Creed‘s analysis of the abject maternal in horror cinema reveals that it is precisely the uncoupling of the maternal from maternal subjects that enables the production of  ̳her‘ as a thing of horror— a bloody mess of signs. This analysis echoes the story of (masculine) identity acquisition narrated by Kristeva in which the maternal is the  ̳constitutive outside‘ or as Butler puts it  ̳the unspeakable, the unviable, the nonnarrativizable that secures ...the very borders of materiality‘ (1993: 188). What these theoretical and cultural fantasies of `fleshy maternal horror` depend on is a radical dismembering and/or disavowal of maternal subjectivity.

As Butler argues, the limits set by theory are problematic  ̳not only because there is always a question of what constitutes the authority of the one who writes the limits but because the setting of those limits is linked to the contingent regulation of what will and will not qualify as a discursively intelligible way of being‘ (1993: 190). Since the premise of the Kristevan abject is that the maternal cannot qualify as ̳intelligible being‘, it is a strikingly affirmative translation of this concept that is cited, circulated and reproduced within these feminist theoretical accounts. Kristeva‘s theory of abjection is founded on the premise that the maternal cannot be, cannot speak and cannot take up a subject position which raises a series of unresolved questions for Anglo-feminist adoption of an abject paradigm to theorise maternal subjectivity. Moreover, as I shall argue, the myopic focus within feminist abject criticism on the transformative potential of excavating `the cultural abject`, particularly those accounts which celebrate the abject maternal as marking a feminist challenge, risk marginalising lived experiences of being the thing deemed abject. Furthermore, representations of maternal abjection are not simply a ritual playing out of the violent unconscious phantasies that underpin Patriarchal society, but are constitutive of the desire for maternal abjection. There is a failure to understand theory and criticism as productive fields within which the abject maternal is not simply described but more fundamentally reconstituted as a foundational norm of psychic and social life. As Butler notes,  ̳the production of the unsymbolisable, the unspeakable, the illegible is ...always a strategy of social abjection‘ (1993: 190). Abject criticism risks becoming another site in which a narrative of acceptable violence is endlessly rehearsed until we find ourselves not only colluding with, but more fundamentally believing in, our own abjection.

Donna Haraway notes that,  ̳Overwhelmingly theory is bodily, and theory is literal. Theory is not about matters distant from the lived body; quite the opposite. Theory is anything but disembodied‘ (1992: 299). Perhaps this is why Kristeva‘s sentence `Matricide is our vital necessity, the sine-qua-non condition of our individuation‘ takes my breath away each time I read it. Does this theory describe a murderous hatred for the mother that we are compelled to live? In repeatedly insisting that the maternal is pre-symbolic, Kristeva‘s theory of abjection not only reiterates the taboo on maternal subjectivity but also legitimates the abjection of maternal subjects. Kristeva does not enable a new ethics of the maternal to emerge as some feminist philosopher have argued (see, for example, Harrington 1998: 139). On the contrary, her speechless maternal disavows the very possibility of vocalising lived accounts of maternity. The abjection of the maternal is not just a theoretical fiction, but speaks to living histories of violence towards maternal bodies.

Abjection, as any dictionary definition states, not only describes the action of casting down, but the condition of one cast down, that is the condition of being abject. Abjection is not just a psychic process but a social experience. Disgust reactions, hate speech, acts of physical violence and the dehumanising effects of law are integral to processes of abjection. Indeed, abjection should be understood as a concept that describes the violent exclusionary forces operating within modern states: forces that strip people of their human dignity and reproduce them as dehumanised waste, the dregs and refuse of social life (Krauss 1999: 236). The problem, as Butler states, is to imagine how `such socially saturated domains of exclusion be recast from their status as ―constitutive‖ to beings who might be said to matter (1993: 189). The final section of this article thus shifts its focus from the theoretical violence of abject criticism to a consideration of lived accounts of maternal abjection.

Lived Abjection

Pregnancy has traditionally been understood as a reified and protected time in women‘s lives but new research that reveals the scale of intimate partner male violence against pregnant women has exposed this to be an idealised myth. There have been over one hundred studies focused on intimate partner violence in pregnancy in the last decade (see for Jana Jasinski Jana 2004 and`Rebecca O‘Reilly 2007 for overview of literature). These vary considerably in terms of the size of the sample and methodology employed, but there is consistency in terms of the percentage of pregnant women reporting violence in a range of different national studies. Whilst interpretations of statistical data, methodologies and the implications of this research are inevitably contested and debated, the fact that battery during pregnancy is widespread is uncontested. Researchers in the United States have estimated that 332,000 pregnant women are battered each year by their male partners (in the context of 4 million life births each year) (de Bruyn 2003). A questionnaire survey involving 500 women in the North of England found that the prevalence of violence against pregnant women was 17% (with 10% of this group experiencing forced sexual activity as part of their battery) (Johnson, Haider, Ellis, Hay, Lindow 2003). Recent statistical research has revealed that pregnant women are more likely to be murdered than to die of any other

cause (Decker, Martin and Moracco 2004: 500 and Chang, Berg, Saltzman and Herndon 2005) and analysis of mortality figures in the United States and the United Kingdom has exposed that up to 25% of deaths among pregnant women are a result of partner homicide (Campell, Garćia- Moreno, Sharps 2004: 776). Since the first research findings were published in the 1990s, attitudes have shifted to the extent that is now widely acknowledged that is more common than conditions for which women are routinely screened (such as pregnancy induced hypertension and diabetes). As violence against pregnant women has emerged as serious public health issue it has begun to impact on governmental health policies. The World Health Organization now includes guidelines on tackling intimate partner violence within its `Making Pregnancy Safer` initiative. Many European and North American medical organizations now advocate routinely asking pregnant women about abuse, although debate continues about the most useful strategies for implementing screening.

Whilst pre-existing violence within an intimate relationship is a strong predictor of battery during pregnancy, Michele Decker, Sandra Martin, and Kathryn Moracco argue that pregnancy is a trigger for new instances of violence (2004: 498). Indeed, their research suggests that 30% of women experience their first physical assault by a male partner when they become pregnant for the first time and that when intimate partner violence already exists in a relationship the ferocity of the violence intensifies. As they state, `partner violence that occurs during pregnancy may be a marker of increased risk of severe and potentially lethal danger for some women‘ (2004: 500). Physical assaults that begin or escalate during pregnancy often have a different pattern of violence, with pregnant women more likely to suffer multiple sites of bodily injury. Maria de Bruyn supports this analysis arguing that `instead of receiving strikes against the head [pregnant women] suffer beatings directed towards the abdomen and chest‘ and in one North American study she cites, `pregnant women were hit in the abdomen twice as often as non-pregnant women‘ (2003: 26). De Bruyn (2003) quotes an Australian woman, who states:

I was subjected to constant physical abuse throughout the marriage. But pregnancy was the worst time for me. I had five miscarriages. Every time I fell pregnant he would target the belly whenever he gets violent (2003: 25).

A British report quotes `Mary` a 36 year old women `whose partner would sit on her belly saying he was trying to squeeze the baby out after he had hit and punched her`( Moorhead, 2004).

This suggests that the sight and meaning of the pregnant body invokes a specific and targeted physically violent response. This claim is supported by many midwives and healthcare workers. As Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, a British charitable organisation which provides support for women who have endured violence, notes:

I've seen some appalling cases, including a woman six-and-a-half- months' pregnant who had been kicked so repeatedly in the abdomen that her baby was stillborn. Another woman had a baby who was born with three fractured limbs. It's often the breasts and abdominal area that the men go for when women are pregnant - they're the focus of their anger.

Under what social and cultural conditions does the pregnant body become a trigger for disgust, aggression, hatred and violence? Can violence that is targeted against the visibly pregnant body, be understood as a materialisation of the cultural disgust for the maternal body explored within abject criticism? Reviewing current research, US based medical anthropologist de Bruyn offers a number of speculative reasons why physical and sexual abuse might intensify or be triggered during pregnancy. She suggests, for example, that the battery of pregnant women by a male partner may be a way of forcing miscarriage for economic reasons, i.e. not wanting to bear the cost and responsibility of a child. Certainly, as Gillian Mezley and Susan Bewley (1997) document, violence against pregnant women is associated with increased rates of miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight, fetal injury (including broken bones and stab wounds) and fetal death. However, research on domestic violence has demonstrated that contrary to popular belief, intimate partner violence is not bound by economic class: educated, successful and wealthy men batter too. De Bruyn further suggests that male partners may feel jealous `when the pregnant woman is perceived to devote less attention to his needs and wishes` (2003: 22). In other words, the intensified nature of male violence against their pregnant partners may be a consequence of a desire to destroy the presence of the other, the child or imagined child who is occupying the space and body of the woman that `belongs to him‘. This hypothesis suggests that the pregnancy inspires rage because men feel left out, are jealous or suffer from  ̳frustrated sexual desire‘ when their partners are pregnant. What these speculative explanations for male violence against pregnant women ignore are the violent histories of disgust which frame the meaning of the maternal body. If abject criticism fails to consider the implications of lived experiences of abjection, medical and health research doesn‘t engage with psycho-social literature on the maternal, and the ways in which the reiteration of maternal as abject structures ways of seeing, feeling and acting towards maternal bodies. As one reports notes,  ̳although cultural attitudes about pregnancy would seem to be relevant to abuse during pregnancy, they have not been measured‘ (Campbell, Garćia-Moreno, Sharps, 2004: 776).The accumulation of sociological data and testimonial accounts of violence targeted towards pregnant women is of crucial significance for feminist theoretical research in the area of maternal subjectivity. Indeed, this previously hidden aspect of pregnant experience compels feminist theory to think about how histories of violent disgust for the maternal body, the disgust that abject criticism has been re- describing since the publication of Powers of Horror in the 1980s, materialises in women‘s lived experiences. Abjection has effects on real bodies; abjection hurts.

The violent male partner attempts to exert his control over the pregnant subject through acts of repeated verbal and physical abuse, which dehumanise his victim. Australian researchers, Miranda Kaye, Julie Stubbs and Julia Tolmie (2003) detail some of the ways in which the psychological violence, which always accompanies brute physical violence, manifests itself. They argue that psychological violence is always geared towards control mechanisms which aim to limit women‘s autonomy such as `isolating women within their homes and removing other forms of support‘ (2003:43). Being called derogatory names, being told over and again that you are worthless, being subjected to racist or sexist abuse along with death threats and the ever present threat of physical violence, erodes a subject‘s fundamental sense of who they are. In their Australian ethnography, Kaye, Stubbs, Tolmie explore the material forms of control which diminished women‘s agency. These included having to hand over wages: not being given any or enough money; being told what to wear; not being allowed to have an own opinion or finish a sentence; being locked in the bedroom at night; having to ask permission to watch a television show; all the windows in the house being bolted shut and sleep deprivation‘ (2003: 42-44). All of these acts constitute attempts to disable women of their ability to act as independent subjects. One interviewee noted that as time passes, identity is effaced through these control mechanisms so that: `you don‘t know who you are. You just follow ... the order so you just follow what he say because ... you don‘t think you are a person or human being‘ (2003: 44). Battered women‘s idea of themselves as individuals is gradually obliterated, they are literally pushed `toward the place where meaning collapses‘ (Kristeva 1982: 2). One battered woman in Kaye, Stubbs and Tolmie‘s ethnography notes, `you reach to the point [at] which you lose completely your identity. You don‘t know who you are.[...] you don‘t think you are a person or human being‘ (2003: 41). For these women, repeatedly dehumanised and objectified, violence is experienced as banal. Indeed, what is truly horrific about these testimonies is that violence is  ̳every day‘. This is being on the edge of non-existence. This is maternal abjection lived.

Kristeva argues that the abject emerges into sight when  ̳man strays on the territories of the animal‘ (1982: 12). This phrase is telling, for Kristeva thinks and writes abjection from the perspective of `the man who strays‘ rather than the perspective of the subject who finds themselves interpellated as abject animal (less than human). Nevertheless, it is clear that if a person and their bodily appearance is designated the abject thing, that `magnet of fascination and repulsion‘ they are subject to dehumanising violence (Kristeva 1995:118). The figuring of abject beings as animalistic (less than human) is part of the process of dehumanisation that routinely takes place in experiences of being abjected. The theme of being (made) animal repeatedly surfaces in women‘s accounts of intimate partner violence in pregnancy. In the quotation from Kaye, Stubbs, Tolmie‘s ethnography, with which I began this article, ̳Toni‘ recalls,:

He locked me in a dog‘s cage when I was pregnant .... He jumped me in the kitchen window and pulled a knife to my throat. ... Um you know he would do so many things—like its sort of hard. He punched me.—You know like just—just normal things that um you know like made me have an abortion.... [The violence was] more or less every day (2003: 41).

These `normal things`, the vicious punch of the real, the brutal and sadistic slap, slap, thump, shuts ̳Toni‘ up, turns her into an animal, a dog, a maternal aborting Thing.

What is at stake in acts of violence against pregnant women is control over the maternal body and control of sex and reproduction. The powerful story of abjection that Kristeva (and feminist theorists of abjection) narrates is one in which we are  ̳born‘ through a violent struggle over identity, a struggle which takes place over and through the bloodied and bruised maternal body. Kristeva‘s account of abjection can be usefully drawn upon in theorising the psycho-social mechanisms at play in lived accounts of maternal abjection. Her work is potentially useful, for example, in developing better understandings of why the visibly pregnant body is a trigger for violence. However, the deeply engrained psycho-social association between the maternal and the abject is an historical condition and not an unchangeable fact. Maternal abjection, in theory and practice, is that which feminism needs to articulate itself against

Whilst feminist theorists have demonstrated that war is waged over the reproductive body, the violence committed against pregnant women has remained largely unspoken within feminist accounts of reproductive politics. The social taboos surrounding intimate partner violence make it extremely difficult for pregnant women to speak about being battered, tortured and controlled. Given that pregnant bodies are so routinely monitored by the medical gaze, it is perhaps surprising that widespread violence has remained so invisible. However, as Brewer and Mezey note:

Changes in midwifery and obstetric practice designed to `empower` women and demedicalise childbirth may have reduced the possibility of [speaking about violence]. The traditional refuge of woman-only space in antenatal wards and labour wards is disappearing. The milieu of the antenatal clinic is not particularly conducive to facilitating disclosure of domestic violence, which women find difficult, shameful, and risky. Men often accompany their partners to clinics and in labour, and hand held notes mean that confidential documentation is no longer in the safe keeping of the hospital (1997: 1295).

Ironically the opening up of ante-natal spaces, such as clinics and hospitals, to men has potentially limited women‘s ability to speak out, whilst the marks of physical and psychological violence can be hard to detect: women disguise bruised skin and men often deliberately batter women on parts of their body that others will not see. If maternal subjectivity is impossible to conceive, intimate partner violence against maternal bodies was, until recently, unheeded and unheard.

Communities of the abject

One of the few places in which women are able to share their experiences of violence without fear of retaliation is in Internet chat rooms. The Internet (and the imaginary promise of anonymity if offers) has the potential to be a safe(r) space for battered women to speak out. On the Internet site, BabyCenter.com, I found a discussion thread in which pregnant women discussed the violence they where enduring at the hands of their partners. BabyCenter.com is a website which offers  ̳expert‘ information and advice to pregnant women. It is a magazine style site that hosts reviews of consumer goods and is sponsored by links to on-line shops. However, behind this bright shopping façade, BabyCenter offers another perspective that penetrates the happy familial myths about maternity. Whilst the abused women who speak out in chat rooms must learn to  ̳cover their tracks‘ so their partners cannot trace their web histories, they have created on-line communities, founded in their shared abjection.6 These women in chat rooms form `communities of the abject` who, through the act of sharing and speaking their abjection, refuse their constitution as `abject object`.

In a BabyCenter chat room pregnant women post accounts of the daily violence they are enduring at the hands of their partners. One woman calling herself  ̳worried mom‘ writes in a breezy chatty tone, which belies the content of her post:

Hi. I have a question. Since I found out I was pregnant, my husband and I haven't been getting along well. We used to call each other names, but I stopped. He still calls me stupid and a bad parent and he pushes me sometimes. The other day he slapped me across the face. I yelled at him before he did it. He sometimes pushes me so hard that I fall. Is that harmful to my baby? I'm a little over 7 months pregnant. What should I do? Please email me.7 (Anonymous post 2004)

Women on this discussion site respond to each others with messages of recognition, solidarity and support:  ̳Amanda‘ writes,  ̳I'm almost eight months pregnant, and I left my husband two months ago. He was abusive emotionally before pregnancy, and became sexually and physically abusive after I became pregnant ... life is much better without the constant fear of your husband‘. Some of the women write about approaching the police, telling friends, family or neighbours, but others warn of their experiences of failure when they sought outside intervention. As one woman notes, `[t]he police where no help, they told me that since I hit him first I would be the one to go to jail`. However, very little of the discussion on this site focuses on the practical means by which women can leave their violent partners. Perhaps because, as Angela Moe and Myrtle Bell argue, in their article `Abject Economics‘(2004) battered women are often caught in a vicious cycle of economic dependence on their abusers. Repeated physical and psychological violence undermines women‘s ability to work and maintain steady employment and this cycle of dependency is even more acute when the women is pregnant or a mother. One woman in the Babycenter chat room supports this in her description of the poverty she endured when she left her abusive husband. Moreover, research has consistently shown that women often endanger their lives when they attempt to leave the men battering them. Many simply cannot imagine leaving and express a deep ambivalence about their partners, writing about them with love and tenderness in the same sentences as they depict gut-wrenching scenes of psychological torture and physical violence. Reading through these posts, I felt that there central purpose was witness and visibility, a desire to reclaim a semblance of agency through sharing their abjection.

The Babycenter chat room operates as a means for women to acknowledge (to themselves and others) their shame at what is happening to them. More complexly, it is a means through which women attempt to re-humanise themselves, to identify with themselves as the subjects of violence, rather than the abject Thing that violence produces them as. In the following post, we can see how the writer begins, hesitantly, to acknowledge, through imagining the previous poster reading her words, `that something has to be done‘.

I just want to share my thoughts w you because reading what you said made me feel not so alone. I love my husband very much too and he started to become more physical ever since I became pregnant. ...He has pulled my hair, kicked, and pushed me. He has grabbed my arm so tightly that his thumb print was left on my arm. ...I know what others might think reading this. I am embarrassed to even talk about it. It makes me so sad and disappointed that I dont have the relationship that I thought I did. I dont think what he does is okay but I havent done anything to make my situation better. I was thinking getting a therapist but I dont even know myself (Anonymous post 2004).

The words,  ̳I don‘t even know myself‘ speak so much of being abject. In order for injury to be recognised, these women need to be recognised as subjects by another- as an  ̳I‘ that has experienced this violence. However, whilst these posts do enable these women‘s to narrate lived accounts of their experience, this is a tiny fragment of `anonymous visibility` hidden in the margins of an website and produced by subjects whose very sense of being is fragile in the extreme. These posts are weighted down with guilt, shame and blame, and express dazed and battered identities.  ̳He is battering my soul, my self-esteem, my identity‘ writes one woman. In the most disturbing post in the chat room, one woman signs her message with the words  ̳crying for help‘:

While I was pregnant he would hit me and throw me around. I don‘t know what to do, he does it even worse now. ...He kicked me with steel toe boots on and now I have a bruise the size of a softball, not to mention the rug burns on my elbows and the jaw pain and my sprained ankle. I don‘t know what to do. It just gets worse. The night before I had my daughter he threw an apple at me and it hit my belly. It left a bruise that you couldn‘t see but I could feel. The next morning I woke up with broken water. I don‘t know what to do anymore. When he gets mad he tells me he wants to kill me. He covers my mouth and nose so I can‘t breath. I am afraid I won‘t be around much longer. I am afraid one day he will go that far. And then say it was an accident. But I know it‘s not an accident. I just want someone to know before it does happen and no one knows who did it (Anonymous post 2004).

This post and its repetition of despair is heart breaking to read: `I don‘t know what to do‘, `I don‘t know what to do anymore‘, `I am afraid I won‘t be around much longer‘. What sort of recognition can a reader of these posts possibly grant to this anonymous woman and her plea,  ̳I just want someone to know before it does happen and no one knows who did it‘? These women express what it feels like to be cast down, humiliated, debased, pushed to the point where you are no longer know yourself`. What these posts communicate is experiences of being made abject— experiences which, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, they manage to communicate.

Social Abjection

For Kristeva, abjection does not signify living an unbearable life on the margins of social visibility, but something more akin to the writer‘s quest, the holy grail of the avant-garde. In the after-word to Powers of Horror she muses:

Does one write under any other condition than being possessed by abjection, in an indefinite catharsis? Leaving aside adherents of a feminism that is jealous of conserving its power — the last of the power-seeking ideologies — none will accuse of being a usurper the artist who, even if he does not know it is an undoer of narcissism and of all imaginary identity as well, sexual included (1982: 208).

These oblique comments are revealing of Kristeva‘s politics. Only the male artist `possessed by abjection` can communicate the abject maternal at the limits of identity. The experience of abjection enjoyed in the work of these writers is unavailable to women writers and artists due to the different structure of their subjectivity, in particular their incomplete separation from their mothers, an unwillingness perhaps to participate in matricide (see Kristeva, 1989). Whilst the implications of this argument, and the contradictions it exposes, are beyond the reach of this article, it is important to note that here, in the afterword to Powers of Horror, Kristeva makes clear she has nothing but contempt for a feminism which would question maternal abjection.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asks: `What are the cultural politics of application of the diagnostic taxonomy of the abject?`(1992: 55). Following Spivak‘s cue, this article has focused on the sexual politics of Kristeva‘s theory of abjection — it has questioned the constitutive matricide in which theories and accounts of abjection are grounded, explored what it means to diagnose something or someone as abject and considered what the effects of such a diagnosis might be. It has examined the feminist strategy of invoking a powerful tradition of disgust for the maternal body and questioned whether this `affirmative abjection` can transform abject representational codes. It has argued that whilst feminist abject criticism has proved useful in mapping the ways in which abjection is communicated and transmitted, it has largely failed to consider the effects of abjection on embodied subjects and in this respect has been complicit with psychoanalytic and philosophical accounts which repeatedly disavow lived accounts of maternal subjectivity. For whilst Kristeva‘s account of abjection is compelling (at an explanatory level) what is completely absent from her account is any discussion of what it might mean to be that maternal abject, to be the one who repeatedly finds themselves the object of the others violent objectifying disgust. As I have suggested, Kristeva‘s account is dependent upon her ambiguous use of the term maternal. This article has troubled the distinction between the maternal as abstract concept and the maternal as lived and embodied by insisting that we take theory at its word. The maternal abject (and the matricide it assumes) is not a pre-historic, unchangeable fact but is a disciplinary norm which has been established through processes of reiteration and has taken on the appearance of a universal truth. However, the repeated framing of the maternal as abject shapes the appearance and experience of maternal bodies in the social world. Feminist theory needs to shift its focus away from `observational reiteration` of maternal abjection as it manifests within cultural realms. This doesn‘t mean abandoning the concept of abjection, which is perhaps unique in its ability to articulate the psycho-social dimensions of violence. However, we need new theories of social abjection to wrench this concept from a purely Kristevan paradigm. Specifically, we need to document the role the maternal abject plays within intimate, inter-subjective, generational and social relations and challenge the forms and processes of abjection that are central to the social exclusion and marginalisation of women. As Spivak suggests: `Why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history that has written such an abject script for you?‘

Footnotes

From this point onwards I will use the term `Anglo-Feminism` for brevity.

Kristeva repeatedly returns to the work of male avant-garde writers such as Céline, Joyce, Aragon, Sartre, Baudelaire, Lautreamont, who, in her estimation, immerse themselves in abjection through their writing practice.

Whilst Kristeva‘s formulation of the abject challenges Lacan‘s distinction between the imaginary and symbolic realms it resembles his concept of `the Real` and the related concept of `jouissance`.

This is precisely Amber Jacob's project in On Matricide 2007, which is a brilliant attempt to re- theorize matricide through feminist revision of Greek Myth.

Judith Butler's account in Bodies That Matter is the most thorough feminist challenge to the universalism of Kristeva's account.

See http://thesafetyzone.org/security.html for advice given to battered women on how to reduce the chances that net travels will be traced.

I have refrained from giving specific dates or url links due to concerns about the participants safety and also a concern that the site administrators may desire to censure this use of chat spaces.

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