Extensive cooperation has been seen among Chinese and U.S. medical experts and scientists from multiple levels, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Thursday.

"Strong professional ties between American and Chinese medical experts have largely survived" as institutes in the two countries joined forces in research projects, despite threats like academic decoupling and vaccine nationalism, the SCMP said.

The Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health and Harvard Medical School initiated five-year research collaboration in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 in February. The Chinese team, led by renowned respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan, and the U.S. side, led by dean George Q. Daley, have launched 92 research projects focusing on rapid detection of novel coronavirus, infection and pathogenic mechanism, clinical treatment and drug and vaccine development among other areas.

Fudan University and the Baylor College of Medicine at the University of Texas have partnered on vaccine development. The Chinese Academy of Engineering, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and Royal Academy of Engineering "jointly affirm our commitment to foster and facilitate international action to respond to the global COVID-19 pandemic through engineering approaches," said the NAE in a joint statement in January.

At the individual level, "Chinese and American scientists have collaborated on information collection and sharing, joint scholarly articles and webinars on COVID-19," said the SCMP.

Zhong had an online exchange with top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci in a forum hosted by the University of Edinburgh. The two experts shared their concerns about the COVID-19 crisis as well as future global public health systems, and agreed that all countries should maintain the spirit of solidarity, enhance cooperation and work together to vaccinate as many people as possible.

In another virtual forum hosted by Tsinghua University and the Brookings Institute, Chinese and U.S. healthcare experts also called for collaboration between the world's two biggest economies in the fight.

"We need to work together in a global fashion," said Ian Lipkin, director of Center for Infection and Immunity, Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, adding that "a global food and drug organization" is needed for sharing data, and the countries should stay focused on basic scientific research.

Vaccine manufacturers also cooperated. China's Advaccine Biopharmaceuticals Suzhou Co., Ltd. and the U.S.'s Inovio Pharmaceuticals announced their cooperation in January on a COVID-19 DNA vaccine candidate named "INO-4800." An mRNA COVID-19 vaccine that has been approved for emergency use in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was developed by China's Fosun Pharma and the German biotechnology company BioNTech, which also made a vaccine with Pfizer.

According to a study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, the collaboration between the two countries' scientists on COVID-19 papers rose from 3.6 percent in 2018 and 2019 to 4.9 percent in the first four months of 2020.

Another study cited by the SCMP showed that "Chinese scientists collaborated with their American peers 2.7 times more than they did with British scientists, their second-most common partners."