HONG KONG: Eyes bloodshot and voice hoarse, Luo Shuiguang has worked till dawn for three nights in a COVID-19 testing laboratory of Hong Kong.
“It’s really hard but I had been fully prepared for this physically and mentally before coming here, and I must do my best,” Luo, 30, said.
Luo, a technologist in the clinical laboratory of Huangjiang Hospital in Dongguan, Guangdong province, arrived in Hong Kong on Aug. 28 as a member of the third nucleic testing support team from the Chinese mainland.
His mission here is to help an ongoing mass program aimed at screening COVID-19 patients in Hong Kong.
The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) launched Tuesday the Universal Community Testing Program to find asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus and cut transmission chains.
Hong Kong residents aged no less than six can get tested for free and voluntarily. A total of 141 swab collection stations are operating across Hong Kong and specimens are sent to the “Fire Eye Laboratory” at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Sports Center where Luo works. The lab was built by mainland testing service provider BGI to boost Hong Kong’s testing capacity.
Luo is responsible for extracting the nasal and throat swab samples taken by front-line medical staff. “As we have direct contact with the samples … we are at great risk of getting infected.”
Hong Kong has witnessed a new round of the COVID-19 outbreak since early July, which overstretched hospitals and testing institutions. – Agencies
