Mei Yiqi (L) disinfects the box containing nucleic acid samples in a refrigerated vehicle in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei Province, Jan. 8, 2021. Mei Yiqi, 30, who works in the logistics department of Wuhan KingMed Diagnostics Group Co., Ltd., bid farewell to his family on Wednesday and took a high-speed train from Wuhan to Shijiazhuang to help fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Mei participated in the anti-pandemic work in Wuhan and Chengdu successively including taking charge of the collection and transportation of COVID-19 testing samples in Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital. Mei Yiqi takes his job as a patient sample "deliveryman," who fetches samples from several sampling collection sites in Shijiazhuang by the refrigerated vehicle. Sometimes, he needs to drive to expressway stations and get samples from neighboring cities. To ensure the safety and sealing of the samples, Mei must prepare special transport boxes with several disinfection for each batch of samples. The samples will be brought back to the nucleic acid testing service institution in the shortest possible time. On January 6, Shijiazhuang launched citywide nucleic acid testing. As a patient sample "deliveryman," Mei Yiqi has worked more than 18 hours a day and tries his best to race against the virus. Over the past few days, Shijiazhuang has experienced freezing weather, with the temperature dropping to minus 15 degrees Celsius. In the previous work, Mei Yiqi has not encountered such coldness. "Fingers freeze even if I'm wearing gloves", he said. "The pandemic in Shijiazhuang is not over yet, and I will continue to fight until we embrace the victory", said Mei, "and I am proud to have played my part in this special period." (Xinhua/Mu Yu)
