My <i>dabai </i>cousin at the front line of the COVID-19 battle

While I was locked down in my community in Jing'an District as part of Shanghai's "grid screening" last Wednesday, my cousin Tina Wang told me that she would be helping with nucleic acid testing around her hospital in Hongkou District on Friday.

Credit: Ti Gong

"Grid screening" aims to curb the spread of the coronavirus in selected areas, where residents will be locked down and complete two nucleic acid tests within 48 hours.

My cousin Wang is of the same age as me and has worked as a pharmacist in a hospital for over three years.

She became one of the 12 dabai (medical staff in white protective suits) in a team that worked from 2pm to 8pm last Friday, responsible for taking samples from over 2,000 residents of a neighborhood in Jiangwan Town Subdistrict of Hongkou District.

She said the queue was orderly, though it was a little bit cold because of the rain.

Predictably, a dabai could not drink, eat or go to the bathroom in the stuffy protective suits.

Credit: Ti Gong

However, this was not the first time that she had done such work.

We haven't seen much of each other for the past two years. Since the pandemic first broke out in 2020, she has been engaged in the prevention and containment effort, and whenever she worked in the 24-hour fever clinic, she would avoid meeting with me to avoid possible contagion.

As I recall now, it all started at the beginning of 2020, during the then Chinese Lunar New Year holiday.

Before my family headed to my grandparents' home in Jiangsu Province for the annual Spring Festival reunion, Wang received an urgent call asking her to return to the hospital because one of her colleagues had been identified as a close contact of a confirmed case. She was to take her colleague's shift.

Wang is just one of my many acquaintances now engaged in the massive screening effort in the city.

They are from all walks of life, but the resurgence of the pandemic has got them involved in tackling a common challenge.

Screening on this scale entails many unforeseen complications, but with the unremitting efforts of so many medical staff, volunteers and community workers, even deliverymen, and the cooperation of so many residents, we are already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.