As COVID-19 tightens its grip on Italy, an environmental company from Hubei provincial capital Wuhan, the hot spot for the outbreak in China, has donated 10,000 medical protective suits to the European country.

Facilitated by Foreign Environmental Cooperation Center under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, medical supplies from Hubei Zhongyou Youyi Environmental Protection Technology Co have been shifted to Italy's embassy in Beijing following a donation ceremony on Wednesday, according to a media release from the center.

With a long-lasting friendship, China and Italy have been maintaining good and fruitful cooperation in the environmental sector. The two countries were increasingly tied to each other when Italy joined the Belt and Road Initiative, said Zhou Guomei, the center's executive director-general.

"China is willing to work with Italy to fight the epidemic. We believe Italy will effectively curb the epidemic soon and the two countries will surely yield more positive results in their cooperation on environmental protection," she said in the ceremony.

"The virus knows no national borders and we all have a shared future," noted Zhuang Shucai, a representative of Hubei Zhongyou Youyi Environmental Protection Technology Co.

"We are waves from the same sea, leaves from the same tree, flowers from the same garden," Zhuang quoted Roman philosopher Seneca as saying.

China and Italy, a community of shared future, would care and help each other and pull through hard times together, he noted.

It's not the first time the company from Wuhan donated medical supplies to a country waging a battle against COVID-19. Late in March, it donated 400,000 medical face masks and a mobile medical waste disposal facility with daily capacity of 10 metric tons to Iran.