ANKARA

China sent a team of seven doctors to Italy on Wednesday to fight the coronavirus after a telephone call between those nations top diplomats, according to Chinese media.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Italian counterpart Di Maio late Tuesday that Beijing would send medical personnel and equipment to help tackle the outbreak, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported.

Maio told Wang that Italy lacked medical equipment and his country was “paying close attention to and learning from” China’s experience with the virus.

Beijing’s team is led by Red Cross Society of China which includes experts from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and two respiratory disease specialists from Sichuan University’s West China Medical Center.

Italy is the worst-hit nation with the virus known as COVID-19 after China. Italian authorities have put the entire country under lockdown after it registered 631 deaths with more than 8,500 infected nationwide.

Iran, the third worst-hit country after China and Italy, has been helped by Chinese medical professionals in its fight against the virus.

Meanwhile, China, where the virus originated in the central province in Wuhan last December, has made progress in stemming the virus with health officials reporting 24 new cases Wednesday.

A webinar organized by European Respiratory Society last week hosted Chinese epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan who explained to medical experts how China contained the virus.

China also closed 16 temporary hospitals established to fight the deadly virus in Wuhan.