It had taken just 30 minutes for Cong, deputy head of the laboratory and diagnostic imaging department at the Binh Thanh District medical center, to finish preparing swabbing kits, protective clothing and necessary documents. It was still dark as the 36-year-old Cong, along with four colleagues, began conducting random Covid-19 tests in areas around the Mien Dong (Eastern Region) Bus Station in Saigon for the 12th day. From 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., they worked with local medics to take 100 samples of people from Hanoi and the provinces of Gia Lai, Kon Tum and Dak Lak in the Central Highlands. Then the group quickly returned to their office to start other work. Medics take random swab samples at the Mien Dong Bus Station every morning, February 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Thu Anh. One of them took the samples to the Thu Duc Hospital for carrying out RT-PCR tests. Some received people coming from Covid-19 hotspots to check their medical declarations and take their swab samples. Others traveled to two quarantine facilities in Wards 21 and 28 to take swab samples of those under centralized quarantine. After a long day, at around 6 p.m., they started traveling with medics in the district to take random swab samples at local restaurants. It was midnight when the medics returned to their office yet again. The team members have been traveling from place to place and working around the clock for a month, Cong said they initially collected test samples at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport; and after an infection chain was found, they moved on to locked down neighborhoods and worked with the residents there. In collecting samples at bus stations, they had to work from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., said Ho Minh Hoang, head of the medical center in Binh Thanh District’s Ward 26. This means the team members had to be up at 3 a.m. to prepare, which was exhausting. Hoang and Cong later suggested that the HCMC Center for Disease Control (CDC) and bus stations allow …
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