After months of effort, the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan is finally under control. Yet the present tally's benign figures – zero new infections on Wednesday, a first in the city – belies the once frantic medical fight to save the city's critical ill.

For weeks in late January and early February, after the Chinese government had sent one assistance team after another to Wuhan, the city had arguably the country's best medical defense against the virus. Yet with such a concentrated medical elite, it was all the more vexing that Wuhan's critically ill patients showed few signs of recovering during that time. The proportion of the critically ill among all its COVID-19 patients (32.8 percent on Jan 28) and their mortality rate (5.35 percent on Jan 24) remained stubbornly high.

"All I saw were critically ill patients and it felt like I couldn't save any of them," said Tong Zhaohui, a renowned respiratory expert. Tong, vice-president of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, arrived in Wuhan in January to help combat the outbreak.

"They were mostly older people with compromised immune systems and other chronic diseases. Some deteriorated so fast, it was difficult to save them," he added.

One big issue Tong quickly discovered was that due to the deluge of infections, many mild patients couldn't get timely treatment as local hospitals were overwhelmed, and there were no unoccupied beds. Many thus developed into a critical state.

This issue was quickly sorted as medical teams poured into Wuhan to strengthen its designated hospitals, while stadiums and exhibition centers were converted into makeshift hospitals for medical observation and quarantine.

At the same time, Wuhan expanded its number of hospitals designated for the critically ill, from three, in late January, to ten. As of March 2, the ten designated hospitals had a total of 7,286 beds to treat patients in critical condition, including 245 in ICU wards with negative pressure and laminar air flow. They were staffed by medical teams from more than 3,000 critical care departments across China. 

On the fifth floor of E3 section at the Wuhan Tongji Hospital (Optics Valley), a new ICU ward was set up with 30 beds, operated by a medical team from Shanghai. If patients at the hospital’s 16 other sections deteriorated, this ICU ward would be their last defense. 

"Whenever something happens, we pool all our talents trying to fix it, one way or another," local doctor Zhu Wei said of the team efforts at the ICU ward.

One of the tactics in dealing with the daunting challenges at an ICU ward, where patients sometimes might suffer multiple organ damage or even organ failures, was to establish specialized medical teams for heart, kidney and liver conditions, in order to be able to quickly respond to these needs.

As time went by and more patients were cured, Chinese doctors also learned more about the disease. Their treatment in turn kept evolving, made evident by the constantly updated official guidance. 

"Conventional ideas on treatment must change. We need to be more preemptive, like using cannula and ECMO devices (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) much earlier, way before patients become critically ill,” said Tong from Beijing.

At the outbreak's peak, the hospitals in Wuhan that were designated for severe and critically ill COVID-19 patients were staffed by about 13,000 medical workers from 90 national and provincial medical teams. 

It was thanks to their concerted efforts and continuous trials that the city's cure rate for the critically ill was able to shoot up from a low of 15 percent to over 60 percent.