In the fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic, there is such a group of "behind-the-scenes heroes", who face the virus face to face, fight against time, and fight with death.
After the outbreak of this round of the epidemic, all kinds of workloads have surged, and nucleic acid sampling and testing personnel have stuck to their posts every second.
In the past few days, there is a broken hand on social media, which quickly "fires out of the circle" and the number of plays exceeds ten million. In the video, the skin of the thumb of the hand is broken into a large piece, and there is also a broken skin blister on the knuckle of the index finger. In addition, each fingertip has wrinkles and whitening.
This is the hand of Luo Jiajun, a member of the molecular group of the laboratory department of Shanghai Seventh People's Hospital and born in 1996, after unscrewing nearly 2,000 nucleic acid sampling tubes.
Luo Jiajun originally did nucleic acid in the emergency department, and the workload was relatively small compared to the PCR laboratory. On the day of the "broken hand", suddenly there was a "big order" of ten thousand pipes, and the director of the section urgently dispatched Luo Jiajun to participate in the battle.
Luo Jiajun has never had the experience of doing more than 2,000 samples in a class, "one hand screwed the lid, the other hand added, and by 4 a.m. I felt like I was about to collapse, came out and took off my protective clothing, took off my gloves and found that my thumb and index finger were blistering." As soon as I touched it, the skin flipped up. ”
The friends took a picture and sent it to the circle of friends. Unexpectedly, after being made into a short video, it suddenly went out of the circle.
Many people on the Internet have asked, why not do it with a machine?
For this question I would like to say, the machine it is too slow!
It takes 25 minutes for an autosampler to add a sample, compared to 10 to 15 minutes for a human hand. In the face of today's detection volume, the unhurried efficiency of the machine is really maddening. And more importantly, the footprint of a machine is not small, and the PCR laboratory does not have so much space to give the sampler.
Non-stop 24 hours, 3 shifts for 8 hours
In addition to making thousands of specimens for outpatients and inpatients every day, the hospital laboratory department also shoulders a large number of additional nucleic acid testing tasks. Especially when it comes to large-scale nucleic acid testing, the burden of the hospital laboratory department can be said to be heavy.
The PCR laboratory is non-stop for 24 hours, the machine will not feel tired, as long as the machine can turn, all the inspectors must also keep turning. Put on airtight protective clothing, face shields, goggles, and double gloves, and start the day in a hut of less than 10 square meters.
Each batch of nucleic acid testing, from specimen treatment to nucleic acid extraction, nucleic acid amplification, and then to the test results, each shift must work at least 8 hours in a negative pressure environment. The first group of personnel came out of the laboratory after completing their work, the second group of personnel immediately entered the field, and after the second group of personnel was exhausted, the third group of personnel immediately entered the field.
The long operation made the arm stiff, and even the hand trembled when the protective clothing was removed. In fact, not only the arms, the shoulders and neck, the lower back and even the hips and legs, there is no place where there is no pain in the body. During the period of fighting the epidemic, many testers have suffered from serious lumbar muscle strain and cervical spondylosis.
The hands have not broken the skin, the face has not produced blood, and they are not called testers
The average daily test volume of two or three thousand people is always testing the physical limits of testing people. In the case of complete manual operation, how many samples there are, how many times the same steps will be repeated.
After a shift of work, many people's palms are worn out, and their fingers have undergone a process of damage, repair, and re-damage. In the three years of the epidemic, the thumb and index finger of the examinee have a cocoon.
Source: Department of Clinical Laboratory, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University
The airtight protective measures greatly deepen the difficulty of the inspector's work. Protective clothing + goggles + protective mask combination, negative pressure laboratory of minus 20 kPa is 8, 9 hours of work intensity, test people are prone to lack of oxygen, every time you take off the protective clothing, you will unconsciously inhale fresh air.
8 or 9 hours of intense work, wet hair and wet clothes. The metal clip of the N95 mask brings a bright red scratch to the face, and the straps hanging on the ears also make blood marks behind the ears.
Hard work can be imagined.
Support the front line for 7 days, sleep 3-4 hours, now just want to lie flat
Each work link in the nucleic acid testing process requires the tester to be highly concentrated, but each work link is highly repetitive. After a few hours of continuous work, the weakening of the mental state will be obviously felt.
A colleague who works in the CDC's laboratory once told me that after going out to support for 7 days, I only slept an average of 3-4 hours a day.
He told me that they often wore full protective suits, lying on the floor of the laboratory in between waiting for specimens to arrive, wrapped in a yellow garbage bag, pillowing a box of pipette tips, and seizing the time to replenish their energy. Whether it is a forty-year-old team leader or a young person in his twenties, they have been fighting like this for a week. After the support, he told me, "I'm so tired, now I just want to go home and lie flat." ”
Although the examiners did not face the patients like the doctors and nurses, they used specimens to build a bridge of communication with the patients. A test report sheet is a guardian of the life and health of the patients they send, which can send peace of mind to the doctor and bring peace of mind to the patient.
Nowadays, the hard work and efforts of testing people to fight the epidemic are gradually being seen by more people. The sound of praise, words of encouragement, and affirmative eyes make the examinee feel the taste of being valued.
But it is undeniable that the front-line testers in recent years are really tired. They are not superhuman and will feel tired, can you give them more time to rest and a better match?
Cover source: Xinhua News Agency
Some sources: CCTV news client, Jiefang Daily, Pudong release
Editor: Ren Mileage Reviewer: Xiao Ran