Doctors check the CT image of a patient's lungs at Leishenshan (Thunder God Mountain) Hospital in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province on February 9, 2020. Photo: Xinhua

Several doctors in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province confirmed with media on Sunday that two patients who had the coronavirus have received successful lung transplants - they were both in the later period of pulmonary fibrosis. 

The first surgery was conducted at the People's Hospital of Wuhan University on April 20. Chen Jingyu, a leading lung transplant surgeon in China, and his team were responsible for the surgery. The patient did not need to use ECMO (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation) within 48 hours of the surgery and is now in a good condition to make a recovery, thepaper.cn reported. 

The second surgery was also conducted by Chen's team on April 24 and went well. 

Chen wrote on his Sina Weibo on Saturday that as a member of the National People's Congress, he was happy to see his two proposals had been taken - to form an ECMO expert team to aid Wuhan to increase the treatment and recovery of patients in a critical condition; to form a lung transplantation expert team to decrease fatality rates. Chen is also vice president of the Wuxi People's Hospital in Zhejiang. 

In response to why Wuhan is performing lung transplantation surgeries currently, Jiao Yahui, a deputy head of the Medical Policy and Administration Bureau under the National Health Commission, told a press conference on Friday that when the epidemic situation was most severe, it was not an appropriate time to perform transplantation surgeries as the patients may get infected again and the conditions for surgery were not up to standard. 

While as some places enter the post-epidemic period, some provinces, including East China's Zhejiang and Jiangsu are exploring lung transplantation treatments to save more lives. But it would not become a congenital therapy. 

Wuhan announced on Friday that it had fully treated all severe and critical COVID-19 cases.