Editor's note: Djoomart Otorbaev is the former Prime Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic and a distinguished professor of the Belt and Road School of Beijing Normal University.  The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

As COVID-19 cases continue to rise and spread around the world, the outbreak appears to have entered a completely new stage, raising fears of a global pandemic, even as the situation stabilizes inside China.

On February 26, WHO officials said for the first time, the number of daily cases reported outside China had exceeded the number of those reported in the country where the outbreak began. As of February 27, the cases had been reported in 50 countries. What began as a localized outbreak of a new virus in China is now a huge challenge to global public health.

Although the vast majority of infections have occurred in Hubei Province, new self-sustaining outbreaks are fast expanding elsewhere, most worryingly in Iran, Italy, Japan, and South Korea. The shift in focus from China to the rest of the world was further highlighted on February 25, with the announcement that all passengers arriving in Beijing would be subject to 14-day quarantine if they have recently traveled in affected countries.

While looking to the outside world the situation looks quite alarming. "Countries outside China are 'simply not ready' yet to contain a coronavirus pandemic", a WHO expert Bruce Aylward said on February 25. 

Dr. Aylward, who led a mission on COVID-19 to China, warned that countries without the disease preparedness will have trouble containing the spread of the virus. According to him, China's efficient response to the pathogen was due to a few reasons: case finding, tracing contacts, social distancing, and movement restriction. He even said that "If I had COVID-19, I'd want to be treated in China". Dr. Aylward described China's collective action and co-operation in their response as "phenomenal." Can others say the same?

Newest scientific and technological achievements of Chinese scientists and engineers have been applied to tackle the disease and its consequences as well. Both national academic and private laboratories work together and work very hard. 

Take, for example, Alibaba's new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven diagnostics system. It can detect coronavirus infections with an accuracy of up to 96 percent. Or take Baidu's RNA (ribonucleic acid) LinearFold prediction algorithm, which was used to decode a molecular structure of the disease. Another success story is using AI algorithms and specialized computing to sequence DNA of COVID-19 to be able to produce potential vaccines. It took only one month to sequence a requested DNA, and to share it with the colleagues around the world. 

All those and many other findings and discoveries shouldn't stay just within China during the global uncertainty. It should serve all people around the world who are suffering from epidemics. Any virus is a disease of a human, not of a country.

"Look at China. They've done this at scale, they're very good at it and they're keen to help," Dr. Aylward stated.

The rest of the world is "waking up" quickly. COVID-19 has arrived in the U.S. In Washington, President Donald Trump just announced a new team dedicated to tackling the virus, led by Vice President Mike Pence. The White House just sent to the Congress an urgent 2.5 billion-U.S. dollar-emergency-budget request to address the outbreak.

In Europe, with its network of open internal borders, which has been hit hard by the refugee crisis, may now be hit even harder by the new virus. Its cases have emerged nearly daily in new European countries - in Greece, France, Spain, Croatia, Switzerland, and Germany. The European Commission just announced an allocation of an urgent 232 million euros (256 million U.S. dollars) to fight with the epidemic.

Bilateral consultations on how to coordinate the efforts have already started. During their telephone conversation U.S.' and China's presidents agreed that two countries should work closely together to combat the virus. On February 25, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called for coordination with South Korea and Japan against the cross-border spread of the COVID-19 in separate phone calls with his counterparts.

More of these types of high-level contacts will follow. But I think that the war against the common enemy must be based on a multilateral approach. It would be natural if China would provide real leadership, and offer the world its plan on how to organize humanity in its united war against the epidemic, and the sooner the better.

Now, with this virus spreading, and deaths reaching a hundred per day, the nations shouldn't be locked in useless debates or confrontation. Here is the opportunity for countries to find common cause and purpose. Here is the chance to start practicing a global cooperation in the world that is now a small community of common destiny. Nations must get together and set a straightforward course to solve this global emergency. Ideally, it may even set the conditions to prevent the next (not necessarily health related) crisis, and so on. The lives of the people hang in the balance.

The leaders of almost 200 countries and international organizations had underlined China's efficient skills to prevent the further spread of the virus. Most have praised the government for adopting and executing a comprehensive multi-sectorial approach to contain the outbreak, as well as to communicate it efficiently to the outside world. Global spreading of the coronavirus demands even stronger leadership from China, which successfully overcomes the crisis internally.

China has accumulated unique and invaluable experience with key lessons learned on how to fight best against the deadly virus. Now it is the time for the country to lend a helping hand to all humanity.

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