Russian student thanks TCM, people in COVID-19 fight

BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- A couple of weeks ago, Russian student Yulia Temelidi caught Omicron in China, but she recovered soon with the help of a small health kit with different types of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

"Unlike Western medicines, TCM tends to have less side effects, and my body will accept TCM a little bit more calmly," said Temelidi, who studies at China's Tsinghua University.

Having lived in China for years, she holds the view that TCM has played an important role in fighting the virus over the past three years. She even recommends TCM to her best friend, who now takes it as a wonder for the successful treatment of many kinds of diseases.

Temelidi has found TCM very useful even before her Omicron infection. "The TCM health kit could help me a lot when I have a headache or a stomachache or just a small fever. In winter, the medicine called Qingyandiwan helped me a lot with sore throat."

Temelidi said that during the past three years of fight against virus variants, China had provided good protection to its people as well as foreigners in China.

During the first pop-out of COVID-19, Temelidi was in China staying at home. Very few things about the coronavirus were well understood by scientists at that time, and China made strict prevention and control policies to protect people, she said.

"At that time, the only thing that I could do is to stay at home," she said, noting COVID-19 was absolutely really horrible then.

In 2021, Temelidi learned that some of her friends in Russia caught COVID-19, and it seemed like a horrible experience. "They were having a type of Alpha virus or Delta virus. One of my friends experienced a fever of about 40 degrees Celsius for more than a week. He couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, didn't have any taste in his mouth, and it was absolutely horrible."

In her eyes, China raced against time during the three years to inoculate its people and conduct research on possible new medicines.

In her three years of study, the international student was impressed with warmth and goodwill from surrounding people. As she had to study online sometimes, the Russian student felt worried at the beginning.

"Actually, I've been kind of anxious and kind of worried that I couldn't get everything that I needed, such as the proper amount of knowledge, and I don't have a clear idea of how to live in China. But people around me, including all the professors, helped me a lot. My professors told me to message them every time I had a question, and they would answer me very soon," Temelidi said.

She also spoke highly of the medical staff doing regular nucleic acid tests. "I want to say a huge thank you to them, because, first of all, it's really hard for them to wake up in morning to the same job every time. This is very hard and very challenging for their body, for their health," she said, adding that the medics were braving the biggest risk of actually getting COVID-19 for the sake of others' health.

With China's optimized prevention and control policies, she now plans to spend the coming Spring Festival in south China's resort city of Guilin. "With evolving COVID-19 response strategy, our life is returning to normal," said Temelidi.