当客户问及中国疫情（新冠肺炎疫情/COVID-19/Coronavirus），你如何利用英文外贸开发信邮件/函件谨慎回复和准确沟通？

Hi [name],

As you may know, we are still on the Chinese New Year holiday and it seems to be unfortunately a bit longer one this time. You probably heard from the news already about the latest development of the new type of virus. The whole country is fighting this battle and as an individual business we also take all necessary measures to reduce our impact to minimal. 2 things I would like to communicate with you:

We do extra on sterilizing. Although it is known that the virus couldn’t likely survive in the manufacturing and transportation process, we do understand the public concern from a perception perspective. All goods are sterilized in a careful way （好好形容一下你做了什么好事。本叔不知你是咋消毒的就无法写了）

We do expect a certain level of shipment delay due to the fact that the national holiday is officially extended by the government in order to reduce the opportunity of public infection. （一上来就做好expectation management，不要让客户心存侥幸。是的，我们要延了。不止我们，全国都是，你跟谁买都一样的）Therefore, our workers could not back to the production line as planned. The fact here is that we are not able to estimate how long it takes us to back to business. （是的，我们连估计都估不出来！！千万不要瞎估计，不要为将来的麻烦埋下伏笔。）However, we promise to ensure visibility to our customer about the situation. I personally will be in touch regardless of holiday or not to support our customers. (你们最爱的悲情工作可以上演了。平时那种什么7*24小时服务啊，不赚钱也要服务上帝啊，来吧！）

I know this is not quite a solution for you but honestly, it is not much we can control in a natural disaster like this. We trust communication and transparency are the best things we could and will do.

Regards,

Dear [name],

Thanks for your concern.

I believe you have heard a lot from people around or seen much on social networks regarding the coronavirus problem in  China.

It does bring us lots of trouble as you may see in the newspaper that we can hardly go anywhere at Spring Festival.

It is highly suggested that we all stay at home during this special period of time to keep safe as this coronavirus is spread through droplet transmission when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

Staying at home doesn’t mean that we all get infected or ill, which is just a safety measurement.

Thanks to the great support from our Government, unmatched wisdom of the China Medical Team, and China’s powerful medical technology, everything is under control and will get fine soon.

For now, only Wuhan City is severely affected, but all the infected patients enjoy a free treatment with no worries.

Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai medical teams have reported one after another that some curative drugs have been developed and soon become available throughout China.

Thanks again for your concern, we are fine and safe.

Sincerely yours,