Illustration: Luo Xuan/GT

The novel coronavirus continues to churn the world by crushing public health systems and decimating thousands of lives each passing day. As the world's two most resourceful economies, the US and China should join hands in working out better therapeutics and speed up vaccine testing and development.

Recriminations of any kind between the two powerful countries - bickering, castigating or stigmatizing - won't help defeat the deadly disease. Many weak and vulnerable countries are looking for closer collaboration between the two so that they can also benefit.

Currently, many Chinese enterprises are working around the clock manufacturing urgently needed medical supplies including face masks, protective goggles and gowns, and life-saving ventilators. Some of the supplies are being flown to the US, a new epicenter of the ravaging pathogen, relieving serious shortages there. 

However, the US government till today refuses to stop the bitter trade war and lift all the punitive tariffs imposed on Chinese exportsin 2019. Lately, it even upped the ante to cut the throat of Huawei Technologies by restricting supplies of semiconductor chipsets and software. 

Washington's intransigence is inhibiting bilateral commerce and will hamstring each other's businesses and the broader global economy, which has already slipped into a biting recession. 

As the world is fighting a war against the invisible coronavirus, a common enemy of our human kind, it is high time for the US to give up its selfishness of the "America First" policy and stop its relentless trade war. Facing such a mammoth crisis, it is valuable to include China in meetings to coordinate financial, fiscal and health-related global responses.

While the rhetoric of animosity has been abated to some extent, there is now a rising urgency for Washington to reverse course. The two countries need to act fast in rising goodwill - particularly in working together to develop effective medications and vaccines, proliferate life-saving medical equipment, and keep open vital global supply chains, while not the opposite.

The Trump administration is now reportedly considering a partial resumption of economic activity, as the pathogen has led to 16 million layoffs because many US states are coming to a halt. But, the risks run high that infections will bounce back as social distancing gives way to unavoidable close social interaction and congregation. 

A decision to restart the economy should be based on data and science, but not political will, because tens of thousands of innocent lives are on the line. 

China, still seeing small numbers of imported infection cases from abroad each day, has largely brought the outbreak under control thanks to its tough isolation and quarantine measures. 

Although the World Health Organization has strongly recommended China's stringent steps, not many countries and regions emulate it, which are causing distressful consequences worldwide. 

The woeful unpreparedness and botched response to the highly contagious virus are vindictive of the Trump administration's failure to grapple with the once-in-a-century pandemic. The US CDC made a jaw-dropping mistake in flawing its testing kit in the first stage, which helped the virus spread without being checked, and for almost a month the administration didn't advise people to wear face masks to shield liquid droplets - the main course of transmission for the virus. 

Drawing from China's experiences, social distancing alone cannot stem the spread of the coronavirus, and countries should aggressively pursue testing of all suspected patients, and isolate them in order to stop the transmission chains. Ultimately, all the countries jolted by the virus need to seriously learn from the Chinese way of combating the disease. 

Just as Graham Allison, professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, put it, if the Chinese government "demonstrates competence in ensuring its citizens' most basic human right - the right to life," while the US government flounders, "complaints about the measures China has taken will sound to many like sour grapes." So it's time to get real. 

The author is an editor with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn