Scientist grasps true worth of her role
Pan Xiaozhu said she realized the true meaning of her work after chatting with a taxi driver in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, last month. She had taken the cab to go home after a night shift at a temporary laboratory, and the driver told her he had taken several nucleic acid tests recently, and all the results had been negative.
He also told Pan that he had two COVID-19 vaccination shots, meaning he was “very safe”, he said, making Pan feel that all her hard work has been worthwhile.
The 25-year-old is also a group leader at lab in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, which provides nucleic acid tests for local residents. She was sent to Yangzhou last month, after working in temporary laboratories in Guangzhou and Nanjing, Jiangsu province.
Pan said that when she was in Yangzhou earlier this month, she was very happy when she took a walk at night. She saw many locals taking leisurely strolls on the shores of a lake after the lifting of a lockdown that had required many residents to stay home for weeks to help prevent and control the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“Our work interacts with epidemic prevention and control measures, which is of great significance and directly affects the government’s next decisions on prevention and control of COVID-19,” she said.
The lockdown in Yangzhou was lifted after the outbreak was brought under control last month, while no large-scale outbreaks of COVID-19 had been found in the country, she said. The temporary labs, known as the “Falcon Cube Laboratory”, are operated by KingMed Diagnostics Group. They provide quick, high-quality testing and track key groups by using advanced technologies, playing a role in helping to control the COVID19 outbreak.
Pan usually works shifts of more than 12 hours in her lab, which can test more than 180,000 samples a day.