Sore shoulders, dirty diapers: member of mainland team discusses experience with Hong Kong’s Covid-19 testing scheme
- Deng Yanqin, of the Fujian Center for Disease Control and Prevention, says team members assisting in testing scheme wore diapers to minimise breaks
- She also recalls positive feedback from Hongkongers, despite negative public reactions to mainland assistance
Members of the mainland support team taking part in Hong Kong’s mass coronavirus testing programme have a secret weapon to raise efficiency: diapers.
Deng Yanqin, a member of mainland support team, said she and her colleagues worked 12-hour shifts a day initially, with their working hours later reduced to eight hours a day – sans bathroom breaks.
“To raise efficiency, team members put on diapers so that they could stay in makeshift laboratories for eight consecutive hours,” she said during a group interview with the Post and a handful of other Hong Kong media outlets on Saturday.
Deng, who came from the Fujian Center for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of the 600-member support team sent to Hong Kong to operate lab facilities for the mass testing programme.
She said team members were divided into about a dozen groups specialising in different procedures.