Chongqing- On the evening of Oct. 13, the “COVID-19 Heroes: Public Lecture on Chongqing’s Fight Against the Virus” was held at the Chongqing Public Cultural Art Center to commend the exemplary deeds of advanced individuals, groups, CPC members, and grassroots Party organizations. Nine of Chongqing’s COVID-19 heroes went on stage to share their anti-epidemic stories with representatives of people from all walks of life sitting in the audience seats and the whole world. The public lecture is set to be broadcast on Chongqing Television at 7:50 p.m. on Oct. 19.
Chongqing's COVID-19 heroes pose for a group photo on the stage.
“In the 46 days we spent in Wuhan, our medical team admitted 119 confirmed cases for treatment, 75 of which were in critical conditions, and cured 113 such cases, bringing our assistance to Hubei to a successful closure,” Zhou Fachun, director of the department of critical care medicine in the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University. “As of March 29, all 160 members of our medical team sent to assist Wuhan’s fight against the virus safely returned to Chongqing, maintaining a zero infection rate among medical staff members.”
This wasn’t the first time for Zhou to be at the center stage of a public health crisis. He had also been actively involved in the fight against the SARS virus in 2003, the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008, and the bird influenza in 2017. “These encounters with death have made me increasingly realized the true meaning of life,” he said when recounting his past experiences fighting in the front line.
Medical workers sitting in the audience seats applaud a narrator's speech.
Huang Xia, deputy director of the department of critical medical care in the Sanxia Affiliated Hospital to the Chongqing University, was also busy fighting in the front line during the depth of the pandemic. A head-and-shoulders photo of her wearing a face mask while working was printed on a whole page of People’s Daily’s newspaper on March 12, with a conspicuous red-lettered caption saying “the stars in the sky are not as shiny as the eyes of medical warriors in white.”
“Sanxia Affiliated Hospital admitted a total of 248 confirmed cases from northeast Chonqing, yet this was just a drop in the ocean when compared to the achievements of the 174 clinics, 48 county-level hospitals, and 4 medical concentration sites designated for treatment of COVID-19 cases,” said Huang. “In the process of fighting COVID-19, I’ve reaffirmed my beliefs in saving people’s lives as a doctor and safeguarding people’s health as a warrior in white.”
Huang Xia narrates her real-life experience in the fight against the virus.
Jian Fuqiong, a head nurse with the Chongqing People’s Hospital and a member of the city’s fourth batch of a medical expert team to Hubei, took special care to provide psychological counseling patients at two of the makeshift hospitals in Wuhan. The 200 some patients within her charge had all managed to be discharged with a record of zero accident, zero infection, and zero death. As she put it, the secret behind is to treat all patients with warmth and make them feel at home.
“We carefully conducted surveys and sample tests on the thousands of suspected close contacts, and finally figured out the infection chain of the first three confirmed cases in Shizhu,” Su Kun, a section chief with the Chongqing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, recalled about the time when they first identified the existence of asymptomatic case in Chongqing. Su and his team’s work in identifying the first asymptomatic case in the city provided great reference value to the anti-epidemic work in other cities.
Su Kun recounts how his team identified the city's first-ever asymptomatic case.
Attended at the event were also Yujian, Party chief of the Nanhu Community in Huayuanlu Subdistrict, who organized one of the earliest responses to COVID-19; Pan Jiming, a former police officer of the Fengwen sub-station in Shapingba District, who died of a heart attack on post after volunteering to join the anti-epidemic efforts; Liu Xuemei, Party chief of the temporary airport CPC branch, who led a health screening team to conduct travel history registration and temperature taking for a total of 21.22 million flight passengers; Wang Hualun, a member of the “Leifeng Taxi” volunteer group, who stayed on the post for over 40 days, providing free transport services to eight left-behind seniors and 13 medical workers and their families; and Lian Xinmin, a journalist with the Chongqing Broadcasting Group, who’s team invited 50 some medical experts to provide anti-epidemic advice daily, and sent 17 journalists to the front line in Wuhan and report the latest situations.
The CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee co-hosted this special event and the Chongqing Municipal People’s Government, undertaken by the CPC Municipal Publicity Department, the CPC Municipal Organization Department, the Municipal Human Resource and Social Security Bureau, and the Municipal Public Health Commission.