Chinese medicine practitioners believe that COVID-19 is associated with the stagnation of cold-dampness in the body. One of the tell-tale signs of dampness build-up within the body is a thick and greasy coating on the tongue. To educate the public on the concepts of dampness and tongue diagnosis in Chinese medicine, Dr Zhang Shiping, Associate Professor of the School of Chinese Medicine, delivered a webinar on Chinese medicine tongue diagnosis and tips for a healthy diet during the COVID-19 pandemic on 7 April, with gourmet columnist Mr Stephen Ip Shue-kwan as the guest host. 

In the webinar, Dr Zhang introduced the standardised photographic protocol developed by his team for taking high-quality tongue images with smartphones, and a mobile application (i-heals.com) that they developed to analyse tongue images with artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Dr Zhang presented tongue images of COVID patients to illustrate the change in their tongue features from the onset of the disease to recovery. He also recommended a selection of soup recipes that are effective in expelling internal dampness for people with different types of body constitution and those who are at various stages of infection. The online event attracted around 200 live viewers and accumulated close to 1,000 views on YouTube in just a few days.

Prior to this webinar, Dr Zhang organised a professional seminar exclusively for Chinese medicine practitioners on 27 March, with Professor Lin Zhixiu, Associate Director of the School of Chinese Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, as the guest host. It was attended by over 200 local practitioners, and the online seminar focused on Dr Zhang’s research findings on tongue coatings in COVID-19 patients in Wuhan and Hong Kong, as well as his experience in offering telemedicine services to local patients.