Mission in race to finish screening
Mainland specialists work around the clock on HK COVID-19 tests
Hong Kong’s Fire Eye Laboratory, located at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Sports Centre, was busy as boxes of COVID-19 testing samples continually arriving after universal screening was launched in Hong Kong on Sept 1.
Hundreds of mainland nucleic acid testing support team members were on duty at the laboratory, which ran 24 hours a day. They were in a race against time to push virus testing forward.
“Every post at the laboratory is closely linked and indispensable,” said Yu Dewen, leader of the nucleic acid testing team from Guangdong province.
More than 1.7 million Hong Kong residents were tested by the time the testing finished on Sept 14.
At the request of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the central government had assembled a nucleic acid testing team to help Hong Kong implement the Universal Community Testing Program
to enhance COVID-19 testing capacity.
More than 570 members of the testing team arrived in Hong Kong from the mainland from Aug 2 to carry out laboratory testing.
As the team members worked long hours every day, diapers became a necessity. “To save time, we try not to go to the toilet,” Xiao Fangzhen, a member of the support team, said, noting that wearing diapers allowed them to work in the laboratory for 12 hours nonstop.
Every time the team members entered the laboratory, they had to change into a new set of protective equipment, including conjoined protective clothing, goggles, N95 masks and double gloves.
Food and drinks for the support team members sent to the laboratory by the HKSAR government were often left untouched.
Xiao explained that team members usually had their meal before starting work and tried not to eat during the course of their shifts.
“We wanted to finish the work as soon as possible to curb the epidemic, so as to allow Hong Kong residents to live a mask-free life,” Xiao said.
Unfortunately, many of the support team members developed insomnia and other sleeping problems after working night shifts for several days. Cai Yonglin, another team member, said that many of them did not have time to rest after arriving in Hong Kong and went straight to work in the laboratory after attending the training session.
Cai said he became determined to work harder to help uncover asymptomatic carriers of the virus after learning that the support team’s efforts and effectiveness had been highly appreciated by Hong Kong residents.
“The sooner we find them, the lower the chances are that they will spread the disease,” he said.
“There were four days when we tested more than 200,000 samples, which was satisfactory and had exceeded our expectations,” Yu said.