By the banks of the Yangtze River, a shiny, modern hospital block towers over Wuhan, ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic. Inside, patients consult doctors in dozens of examination rooms divided by practice cardiology, pediatrics.

It looks and feels like a Western medical facility, but treatments for ailments including Covid-19 at the Wuhan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine are very different.

To combat coronavirus, doctors at such institutions are doling out procedures including acupuncture and moxibustion plus pills and powders, mixed with water, that use ingredients such as bear bile, goat horn, licorice, lily bulb, dried orange peel, sweet wormwood, and honeysuckle.

China is promoting traditional medicine in the absence of a coronavirus vaccine, claiming a combination of alternative and conventional treatments curbed the outbreak.

These remedies, steeped in ancient Chinese culture, have had great impact in battling coronavirus, and prevented serious cases from developing into critical ones, and ultimately lowered the death rate, Liu Qingquan, president of the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said in a press briefing on a government-arranged tour.

But regardless of whether herbal remedies are used, many coronavirus patients may still recover, as 80 per cent of cases are mild, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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China touts alternative remedies from bear bile to orange peel to treat coronavirus - Telegraph.co.uk