A research paper by two Brazilians on the initial effort by China to counter the COVID-19 pandemic won the award for the best paper presented at the International Conference on Public Organization 2021, the China Hoje website says.

The Brazilian news website says the authors are journalist Olívia Bulla and lawyer José Renato Peneluppi, who has lived in the central Chinese city of Wuhan for 11 years and earned a doctorate at Huazhong University of Science and Technology there.

The authors analysed the handling by the Chinese government of the first outbreak of the pandemic, in Wuhan, looking into the use there of mass testing, contact tracing and technology such as QR codes.

The conference brought together academics at universities in mainland China and other parts of the Asian and Pacific region to discuss digital governance and crisis management during the pandemic, China Hoje says.