BEIJING - China's National Intellectual Property Administration (NIPA) has launched an online platform to provide English patent information related to COVID-19 for scientists and the public.

The platform was jointly developed by the China Patent Information Center and the Patent Examination Cooperation (Beijing) Center, two bureaus under the NIPA. The English website of the platform is https://ncp.patentstar.cn/en/.

Website visitors can read more than 7,000 pieces of Chinese and foreign patent information related to epidemic prevention, mainly in the fields of drugs, diagnostic reagents, medical equipment, protective products, medical disinfectants, waste treatment, artificial intelligence and big data applications. Access to the website is free of charge.

It also offers scientists and research institutions data analysis reports about the latest patent achievements in COVID-19 research.

Since its launch last week, the Chinese and English versions of the platform have received more than 173,000 hits, with visitors from the Republic of Korea, the United States, Switzerland, Japan, the Netherlands and other countries and regions, a source of the NIPA said Monday.