HANGZHOU, March 18 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese hospital has released a handbook on the prevention and treatment of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to share experience with severely affected countries around the world.

The Chinese and English versions of the manual were published online Wednesday, ready for medical workers to download free of charge. Versions in Italian, Korean, Japanese and Spanish will be released soon, according to the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University in east China.

The manual is divided into three parts including prevention and control, diagnosis and treatment experience, and nursing experience.

Written under the guidelines of China's National Health Commission, the book sums up two months of practical prevention and treatment experience in the hospital.

As a designated hospital in Zhejiang province for the centralized treatment of critically ill patients, it has admitted 104 COVID-19 patients, of which 78 were critically ill and severe patients. It has so far achieved "zero infections" of medical staff, "zero missed diagnoses" of suspected patients and "zero deaths" of confirmed patients.

The manual is expected to serve as a reference for other countries currently in the early stage of the outbreak, especially in the treatment of critically ill patients, said Liang Tingbo, chairman of the hospital.

As of 5 p.m. Beijing time Tuesday, a total of 97,996 confirmed cases and 4,195 deaths had been reported outside China, according to the daily report published by the World Health Organization.

"Judging from the data, the international mortality rate is no lower than that of China. It is necessary for us to bring our experience and methods to help other countries avoid detours, benefit more patients and reduce the mortality rate," Liang said.

The manual was funded by the Jack Ma Foundation. China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group said the foundation, together with Ali Cloud and Ali Health, will give full play to their advantages in overseas aid and bring the experience to other countries that are in urgent need of technical solutions for prevention and control.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, said the epidemic is a challenge facing mankind in the era of globalization. It is no longer something any country can solve by itself and requires all people to work together to deal with it.

"We can't beat the virus unless we eliminate boundaries to resources and share our know-how and hard-earned lessons," said Ma.

Ali Cloud has launched a Global Direct Station (covid-19.alibabacloud.com), through which medical workers from all countries can download the full version of the manual free of charge.

Subsequently, the channel will also launch a global exchange platform for medical personnel, inviting domestic frontline experts in the fight against COVID-19 to share their experience with overseas medical personnel online.