On January 15, 2021, the news section of Science, the world-renowned magazine Science (Vol 371, Issue 6526), published an article titled "Pandemic Could Mark ‘turning point’ for Chinese Science". The author, Dennis Normand, visited Wuhan in September last year and interviewed Prof. CHEN Jian-Guo, vice president of HUST and Dean of Tongji Medical College.

The article affirmed China's outstanding achievement in controlling the epidemic and mentioned the research results published in Lancet online by the Jinyintan Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of HUST on January 24, 2020. This paper is identified by Elsevier, the largest peer-reviewed literature database, as the most-cited paper in the field in the first half of 2020. The news introduced the fruitful outcome of HUST in the publication during the Covid-19 Panpidemic, pointing out that "from January to June 2020, Huazhong University of Science and Technology published more than 400 papers related to COVID-19, most of which were from TJMC of HUST, where the four authors of the 'Lancet article' from, Affiliated Jinyintan Hospital".

The authors pointed out how HUST can "leverage existing partnerships" during the epidemic, citing the collaboration between Prof. WANG Chaolong of the School of Public Health of TJMC and Prof. LIN Xihong of Harvard. The team's cooperative report strongly revealed that the epidemiological curve "dropped rapidly" after a series of measures taken in several cities in China, such as isolating cases and restricting human contact. The findings have been praised by experts at the University of Otago in New Zealand and dispelled doubts about whether the restrictions in China are "excessive". After the experience-sharing meeting between HUST and Brown University, the latter sincerely lamented that "the friendship established in the past has become the premise which we rely upon in current disaster."

According to the picture attached to the article, two Wuhan-based institutions, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Tongji Medical College were ranked as the top two in COVID-19 related papers by Science Magazine in the first half of 2020.

The article quoted Prof. CHEN Jian-Guo, Vice President of HUST, as saying "HUST medical staff are not only working at the front line fighting against the epidemic but also sharing their experiences with domestic and international colleagues. As of September 2020, more than 70 online anti-epidemic experience sharing meetings have been held in various departments of HUST covering nearly 30 countries on six continents and benefitting millions of people. All these greatly enhanced the international influence of HUST.

HUST, once the center of the epidemic, has invested the most and contributed the most in combatting the pandemic. The outbreak of Covid-19 is regarded as "a turning point for science in China" and therefore a turning point for international exchanges of HUST. As Edward Holmes, a virologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, put it: China's scientific work has "gained real global value" ever since and those involved have "seen the importance of sharing" during the crisis.