Let me be very crisp and to the point. I have a contact who went to Wuhan from Europe around January 23rd 2020. Thus, I could get the information from the heart of Corona land, Wuhan.

I asked these questions:

1. Did my contact take any medicine as a precaution?
2. Before opening up the lockdown whether they took some medicine?
3. What type of masks they were asked to use? Can we make a simple but as effective mask elsewhere in EU/US?

Here is the information that indeed tells us that Chines government knew what to do. If they have lower number of deaths (according to their own numbers) then they knew what to do. If they didn’t know what to do then their numbers are definitely wrong because my information is that per 2000 affected around 250 people have died. That is almost 10% of the positive cases resulted in death!

The Chinese government suggested their citizens in Wuhan to take immunity medicine (though some had strong side-effects) and antiviral medicine! The first medicine has been reported in JAMA review [1].

The following medication was suggested by Chinese government:

My contact took the above two tablets around the beginning of Feb that is after a week or two after landing in Wuhan. Note that the person was never tested and had no symptoms. All the time my contact was home with parents. The food was delivered to their house directly.

The quantity of the above medicine my contact took was as follows:

1. Arbidol [1]:  Two tablets at once, three times a day. You need to take it for 5 days.
2. Oseltamivir: one capsule at once. Twice a day. You need to take it for five days.

Apart from this, the Chinese government also suggested them to use the following-

This is supposed to improve immunity. My contact took this with traditional Chinese medicine for general health and immunity. The equivalent medicine in the west (?) is below. My contact person says,

“this one is different from what I saw in China. But I think the function should be the same. You can consult your doctor. This one can improve people's immunity a lot. But it is a little bit risky. I heard most of the nCOV-19 patients here are using this one. Maybe you can also use this as protection in advance. Following the doctor's instruction should be fine.”

About the mask, I asked my contact how a mask should be if we donot get the readymade ones. If I make a mask using cloth how many layers it should be. The following was sent via email:

“Since the cloth masks also can block your nose and mouth, I think it would be useful. If you want to know how many layers it will work somehow, I know a little bit about the face mask we wear during the lockdown. It is the face mask that can block at least half of your airflow if you exhale heavily. Because we haven't used the cloth mask here, I can only say maybe you can make your cloth mask according to the same standard.”

Regarding the tests, my contact said, volunteers in the community were sent door to door to take the temperature measurements. If found infected, volunteer would drive the patients to the hospital. They have opened up now. People are going out with masks.

Concluding Remarks

In my opinion, the Chinese government knew that there is an issue with the immunity in affected people. They also gave antiviral medicines which can avoid infection if a person is exposed to the virus mildly. They closely monitored the population in the affected areas. It looks like the Chinese government knew what was happening. They knew more about the virus which they didn’t share with others purposefully.

[1] JamesM. Sanders, PhD, PharmD; Marguerite L. Monogue, PharmD; Tomasz Z. Jodlowski, PharmD; James B. Cutrell, MD Pharmacologic Treatments for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) A Review