ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To explore the advantages of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in "prevention" and "control" of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. METHODS: In this paper, we wish to estimate the effect on the virus transmission of scenarios assuming TCM were used to build the first defense line at the very early stage of the spread in Wuhan. We therefore first developed a classic susceptible infected removed (susceptible infected removed, SIR) transmission model based on the national data in China and then updated it to a TCM-SIR model to assess the potential impact of such assumptions, i.e. the underlying risk of lives lost and social economy loss. RESULTS: (a) With the nationwide community lockdown, the risk value was from 90 000 to 250 000 without TCM intervention and the risk value was from 70 000 to 220 000 with TCM intervention; (b) Based the risk assessment method, we forecasted that the infections peak would be 58016 without TCM intervention, which happened on February 17 2020. However, the infections peak would be 45713 with TCM intervention, which happened on 16 February 2020. CONCLUSIONS: The adoption of nationwide community lockdown is conducive to timely control the epidemic and protect people's lives and safety. At the same time, we can get lower infections if TCM intervention can be considered. We can also get the benefits from TCM prevention of COVID-19 pandemic by the basic number of infections.