Special efforts made to secure range of supplies
A park employee in Tempe, Arizona, closes a basketball court on Friday to prevent large gatherings. People in the United States have been told to stay home. (MATT YORK / AP)
Harry Wang, a 30-year-old Chinese-American working in Silicon Valley, California, together with his alumni association, has raised about US$500,000 to help hospitals in China and the United States fight COVID-19.
In New York state, now the global epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Lei Chen, a Chinese restaurant owner, has donated masks, protective suits, goggles and hand sanitizers to about 1,000 police officers and doctors in his community.
In addition to large-scale efforts from the Chinese government, corporations and non-profit organizations, many Chinese and Chinese-Americans have made special efforts to lend a helping hand in the US, where the number of cases continues to surge.
We must look after each other
Harry Wang, Chinese-American working in Silicon Valley, California
According to Johns Hopkins University, the number of COVID-19 cases globally has passed 1.43 million, including more than 82,000 deaths.
Just 11 weeks after the country's first case was confirmed and less than six weeks since its first death, nearly 400,000 people have tested positive for the virus in the US, where the death toll has topped 12,900.
The pandemic has swept across the world's largest economy, sending shock waves to the financial markets, and most people in the US are under orders to stay at home to slow the spread of the virus.
Federal, state and local authorities have warned that this week will be the worst yet for the nation, with US President Donald Trump predicting "a lot of death, unfortunately," and Surgeon General Jerome Adams calling it "the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans' lives, quite frankly."
Monica Guy, a freelance journalist based in New York who is covering the outbreak, said the sights she has seen have kept her awake at night. "I have seen ambulances bringing people who are ill, vomiting with surgical masks on. They are being rushed into an emergency room out of an ambulance.
"You just have to stop what you are doing and watch. You become frozen, because you can't believe this is real.
"I am not sleeping. My husband is not sleeping either, because he is a small business owner and his business has been closed."
A Long Island Rail Road train is largely deserted as it stops at Flushing, New York, on Monday. (LIAO PAN / CHINA NEWS SERVICE)
The past three weeks marked one of the worst periods for the US job market, with first-time claims for unemployment benefit surging by more than 3,000 percent. In the week ending March 28, more than 6.6 million people filed benefit claims, according to the US Department of Labor.
Guy said, "If I could make it (the virus) have a personality, it would be a thief that climbs through the window of your home, infects your family and steals them away, because they don't survive."
The number of infections in hardest-hit New York state is nearing 140,000, including 5,489 deaths, and New York City alone has reported more than 4,000 deaths.
Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York state, said on Tuesday that 731 more people died of the virus the previous day, marking the biggest single-day increase in fatalities in the state, which has been struggling for weeks to expand hospital capacity and access to medical equipment.
Mike Lanotte, executive director and CEO of the New York State Funeral Directors Association, said, "In the last several days, we have seen a huge spike in the number of deaths occurring, especially in New York City."
He said he had spoken to funeral directors, who told him they had been in the job for more than 40 years and had never witnessed such scenes.
Lanotte, who has had no face masks to protect himself and his family in recent weeks, said there is a dire need for funeral directors to get personal protective equipment, or PPE, so that they can continue to do their jobs safely.
"Right now, PPE is the largest issue that funeral directors are facing. The other thing is, time is against us. We want to treat them (the dead) the way we always would－with dignity and respect－but this is becoming so difficult to manage," he said, adding that he hoped that funeral directors from other states would offer help.
On Tuesday, a Los Angeles Times editorial said that the situation has worsened every week for the past two months.
"New cases and deaths are not expected to fall off after this one intensely bad week. Next week will likely be worse still. And the week after that? More sickness and more death," it said. "The safest bet is that this week will be the worst, followed by an unknown number of even worse weeks."
Lei Chen, a Chinese-American, donates protective gear at a police station. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Team quickly formed
On Wednesday, China ended its 76-day lockdown of Wuhan, Hubei province, where cases were first reported in December.
Since then, life has been harder for many Chinese-Americans, who have had to deal with fear, discrimination and business closures. However, in the face of such adversity, they have made it their mission to secure supplies for hospitals.
Wang, from Silicon Valley, studied at Wuhan University and University of California-Los Angeles. He has worked in Silicon Valley for years and sees it his duty to help both China and the US whenever needed.
As vice-president of the Wuhan Alumni Association of Northern California, Wang swiftly formed a team of Chinese-Americans in late January. He worked closely with NGOs, including Direct Relief and MAP International, delivering more than 10 tons of supplies mainly to Hubei, of which Wuhan is the provincial capital.
When the virus began spreading on the West Coast of the US, Wang again led the group of Chinese-Americans, raising as much as they could within weeks, and worked with the NGOs to help hospitals in California buy medical supplies.
"At first, when we tried to persuade the NGOs to assist Wuhan, we convinced them that helping Wuhan was helping China, and helping China was helping the United States, and helping the United States was helping the world," Wang said. "Now, it's time to help the United States, and our NGO partners continue to trust us.
"We do not just care about the Chinese or Chinese-Americans. When other Americans need us, we cannot say no. We say yes, absolutely yes, to helping them."
A representative of the Wuhan Alumni Association of Northern California donates protective gloves to police officers. [(PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Noting that people have increasingly realized that the fight against COVID-19 is a global effort and that the battle is not easy, Wang said, "We must look after each other."
Lei Chen, who comes from Liaoning province and migrated to the US in 2005, also has deep connections with both countries.
Although his restaurants have either been closed or half-closed since the outbreak, Chen has been busy securing medical supplies.
In February, he shipped 40,000 N95 respirators to China. Last month, after seeing that many police officers and doctors in his neighborhood did not have PPE, he donated 20,000 surgical-grade masks, 100 protective suits, 300 bottles of hand sanitizers, 1,000 N95 respirators and two boxes of goggles.
"The other day, as I was driving past a police station, I stopped to give them the only two bottles of hand sanitizers I had in the car. They need them more than I do," he said.
Both Wang and Chen said their feelings had been hurt by Trump describing the outbreak as a "Chinese virus". However, both added that such comments failed to dent their desire to help others.
Wang said: "We want to focus on helping people, raising more money, delivering more medical resources and getting more PPE for the doctors. Whatever he (Trump) says, we still do what we believe is right."
An employee serves customers outside a telecoms shop in Flushing on Monday. (LIAO PAN / CHINA NEWS SERVICE)
Time for solidarity
Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, which is based in New York, said the actions of many Chinese-Americans since the outbreak hit both countries show how Chinese people are contributing to local communities and to a good US-China relationship.
Huang, also director of the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, suggested the two countries should keep working together at national level and through corporations.
To the relief of many, massive help from China has either arrived in the US, or is on its way.
As Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the US, said on Sunday in an opinion piece in The New York Times, China was hit hard by the outbreak not long ago, so its people can empathize with the suffering in the US. China made huge sacrifices to fight the virus, and during the most difficult days, people worldwide offered a helping hand. Now, to help the US make it through, Chinese factories are operating flat out to fulfill orders for medical supplies; provincial and city governments are rushing to help their sister states and cities in the US; and donations are pouring in from China's business sector.
Chinese companies have donated 1.5 million masks, 200,000 testing kits, 180,000 protective gloves and many other medical supplies to the US, Cui said.
On Saturday, Cuomo, the New York state governor, said the Chinese government had helped with a donation of 1,000 ventilators. They came from several Chinese foundations, and Huang Ping, the Chinese consul general in New York, assisted with the donation.
"This is a big deal, and it's going to make a significant difference for us," said the governor.
A shop is sealed off in the district. (LIAO PAN / CHINA NEWS SERVICE)
A list of initial donations to New York state from major corporations, philanthropic organizations and celebrities was announced by the governor on his website on March 26. The list shows that Chinese technology giant Huawei donated 10,000 N95 masks, 20,000 protective gowns, 50,000 medical goggles and 10,000 protective gloves.
In the middle of last month, hours after Trump declared a national emergency to free up US$50 billion in federal resources to combat the virus, billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma offered to donate 1 million masks and 500,000 coronavirus testing kits to the US.
Responding to Ma's donations, YouTube user Nathalie Zhu said China had been the subject of racism and hatred, but had reacted with love and kindness.
On March 29, a planeload of desperately needed medical supplies arrived in New York from Shanghai, the first in a series of flights organized by the White House over the coming weeks to help fight the virus. The plane carried 130,000 N95 face masks, nearly 1.8 million surgical masks and gowns, more than 10.3 million protective gloves and over 70,000 thermometers, media reports said.
Yanzhong Huang, from the Council on Foreign Relations, said that when the pandemic ends, China and the US could, for example, build a global health security fund to prepare for the next outbreak, or to support capacity-building in other countries.
"They could also collaborate with each other in the development of medical countermeasures, price management, disease surveillance and response. There are many areas for the two (countries) to work with each other," he said.
Xinhua exclusively for China Daily
