BEIJING, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- More than 4,900 medical staff from some 600 traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals across the country rushed to central China's Hubei Province to help combat the novel coronavirus epidemic.

Five national medical teams of 757 TCM specialists from the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and other elite medical institutions had been dispatched to the city of Wuhan, capital of Hubei and epicenter of the outbreak.

TCM has been widely applied in treating infected patients as it has proved effective in improving the cure rate. Since the epidemic outbreak, the time-honored treatment has been applied in treating over 60,000 confirmed cases of the infection in China.

According to the National Administration of TCM, medical expert teams in 31 provincial-level regions all include TCM specialists, with most of the regions having made localized TCM treatment schemes for the novel coronavirus.

In north China's Shanxi Province, 84 TCM professionals from the provincial TCM hospital developed prescriptions for the disease in just eight days that would normally have taken three to six months. TCM practitioners raced against time to produce tens of thousands of doses of TCM decoctions which were sent to patients at designated hospitals free of charge.

According to local health authorities, 98.5 percent of infected patients in Shanxi have received TCM treatment, and 91.5 percent of those who have used TCM are getting results.