UNESCO released the introduction video of "IKCEST Covid-19 prevention and Control column" on its official website and Youtube account on April 8. UNESCO Beijing Office further introduced the Column on UNESCO Wechat official account on May 20.

UNESCO Web：

https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-capacity-science-and-engineering

Youtube link：

https://youtu.be/NcYEBWU6SmE

Wechat account: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/KYiIneKuWXUI3cuWj_BAzQ 

The International Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology (IKCEST) is a category-2 centre under UNESCO located in Beijing, China. The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) is responsible for its operation and management. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, IKCEST has responded quickly, and organized its various expert teams to contribute in their own ways, who then jointly came up with a new column on its platform dedicated to COVID-19 prevention and control.

UNESCO headquarters and its Beijing Office fully affirmed this. “Good, scientific-based information is the most useful resource for decision-making during epidemic, and we commend IKCEST’s work to make it available." Wrote Dr. Marielza Oliveira (Ms.), Director and UNESCO Representative to the People’s Republic of China in one of her letters.

This column brings together the latest updates and data presented by international organizations such as WHO, research institutes and domestic media, and presents information in six aspects, namely Policy and Regulations, News and Measures, Experts Viewpoints, Science Express, Science Popularization, and Citizen Stories, sharing with the world in real time the epidemic information, self-protection knowledge, research progress, prevention & control measures and experience (mostly from China), offering solutions to the fight against COVID-19.  

This column also analyses public opinion by integrating the social media analytics and GIS methods. The temporal and spatial changes of epidemic-relevant Weibo (Chinese Twitter) tweets, as well as the main topics discussed by the public, are retrieved and shown in the online maps, providing support for government emergency management decision-making.

This column also provides recorded courses presented by leading medical professionals and scholars in China, as well as resources from Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) databases. A total of 25 courses, over 3,000 EBM topics, and thousands of research papers on COVID-19 can be accessed by the public for free.

The column can also display the global number of the confirmed, dead, cured cases and the growth rate of confirmed cases in real time, and publish the Research Report on the effectiveness of urban anti-epidemic measures.