On March 13, 2020, 17:00 GMT+8, the World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies (WFAS) held its first webinar of international expert group on TCM treatment of COVID-19. Several Chinese experts have participated in the webinar including: Prof. Liu Baoyan, President of WFAS; Dr Li Guangxi, chief physician from Guang’anmen Hospital of China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences; Yu Xiaochun, WFAS Executive Committee Member; Yin Haibo, Vice Secretary-General of WFAS Secretariat; Director of Academic Department of WFAS Secretariat; Yang Yuyang, Executive Vice Secretary-General and Director of WFAS Secretariat office. Representatives of 14 group members from 11 countries of Asia, Europe, America, Australia, Africa of WFAS participated.

First of all, Ms. Yang Yuyang introduced the representatives and invited WFAS President Liu Baoyan to deliver welcome address to the representatives of the 11 countries. After a brief introduction, representatives of each country presented the current situation of the outbreak of COVID-19 in their countries. Many of them have expressed that their medical systems mainly adopt western medicine, and the recognition and participation of TCM is not enough. They hope that TCM practitioners can work together to promote the global development of TCM. They are doing their best to keep their people informed and aware of the latest information about the epidemic by translating Chinese news and documents into local languages, and are also using traditional Chinese medicine as prevention. They also expressed concerns about the shortage of traditional Chinese medicine, such as patent medicines or herbal medicine, looking for China's assistance. Dr. Li Guangxi was invited to share the experience of clinical treatment in Wuhan.

The representatives also thanked WFAS for sharing Chinese and English versions of Guidelines on Acupuncture and Moxibustion Intervention for COVID-19 (second edition), which have been translated spontaneously by them into Spanish and French, and Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (trial version 7).

Finally, the representatives from Italy, Prof. Liguori, Vice President of WFAS and Prof. Petti expressed their sincere thanks to WFAS headquarters: “We would like to thank the Chinese government for sending a medical team to Italy for immediate assistance. However, it is a pity that there are no TCM doctors in the medical team. We hope to suggest through WFAS secretariat to Chinese national health authorities through WFAS that more TCM experts could participate to the national aid medical team, so that people all over the world will benefit from TCM in fighting against COVID-19. In the future, we hope to share more valuable experiences on how China has fight against COVID-19 by integrating traditional medicine and western medicine.”