Unprecedented multilateral international collaborations will work as the key to end the COVID-19 pandemic and bring life back to normal, domestic and foreign experts in public health said at a symposium kicked off on Tuesday in Shanghai.

Global collaboration in technology and public health has become critical and urgent, especially when some parts of the world are undergoing the second wave of the pandemic and the control of the virus' spread is fairly unbalanced in different regions around the globe, they said.

Luckily, some such collaborations have taken place between governments of different nations, research and development institutions, and private businesses at a global level facilitated by the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, experts said at the second Symposium on Global Health.

"Only with such powerful collaborations could it be possible to realize the R&D of COVID-19 vaccines in the upcoming one or two years and eventually a fair accessibility of them worldwide, providing preventive protection for those who need vaccines the most," said Xu Fujie, deputy director of health and innovation at the Beijing Representative Office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The symposium was jointly hosted by the foundation and Shanghai Huashan Hospital Affiliated with Fudan University, supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and undertaken by the Shanghai Science and Technology Exchange Center.

Gao Fu, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and deputy director of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, said that it is clear the coronavirus is very well adapted to human beings – even better than the flu virus – and such a challenge calls for global cooperation.

"Science and technology play an irreplaceable role in eventually putting the pandemic to an end when morbidity and fatality rates drop sharply worldwide, and in face of such a pandemic, togetherness of global scientific research forces is indispensable," said Zhang Wenhong, leader of the Shanghai team of experts in the clinical treatment of novel coronavirus pneumonia cases.

Mao Ying, president of Huashan Hospital, said multilateral international collaborations here refer to the participation of countries and regions, as well as various industries and sectors.

"For example, countries can update each other on their treatment solutions and reallocate the capacity of nucleic acid testing and other medical resources. And also, clinical doctors, public health professionals, virology experts, and pharmaceutical companies should all join hands," he said.

Zhang said when to completely lift travel bans across nations and finding a balance between mobility between countries and control of the virus' spread during normal pandemic control also require the collective wisdom of different countries.

"The efficacy of the highly-expected vaccines, whether their side effects are acceptable to humans, and their popularization worldwide, are the factors that determine when the pandemic will be concluded," said Zhang, who also is director of the department of infectious diseases at Huashan Hospital.

Representatives from multilateral health organizations, including the WHO, the alliance and the coalition, as well as professors from leading public health institutes, including the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, joined the symposium online.