Midnight Yangcheng, Guangzhou Customs Technology Center’s third-level biosafety experiment Babaylan room was brightly lit. Under the light, Shi Yongxia, a representative of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and chief physician of the Health Quarantine Research Institute of Guangzhou Customs Technology Center, was busy nervously accompanied by the buzzing of the inspection instruments. This two-story building is the “battlefield” she has been holding on to for many years, and her “enemy” has the plague, cholera, malaria, influenza that have been endangering humans for hundreds of years, as well as various new infectious diseases such as Ebola, Komiks hemorrhagic fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome, and new coronary pneumonia. There are challenges, dangers, and more responsibility and mission here.
Racing with the virus day and night
In 2006, after Shi Yongxia left the post-doctoral post-doctoral school in Basic Medicine at Southern Medical University, she went to the laboratory of Guangzhou Customs Technology Center to engage in infectious disease-related research, and also established a close relationship with port health and epidemic prevention work.
“The first thing to do with the virus is to identify it in the fastest time. I am a customs technician and a Communist Party member, and I must take the lead in scientific research.” On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic broke out. Shi Yongxia, who originally planned to go back to Henan to visit relatives, retired the high-speed rail ticket and went back to the laboratory to face the unknown virus.
On New Year’s Eve, Shi Yongxia plunged into the laboratory and began sample testing. At that time, the research on the new coronavirus was still in the exploration stage, and the reagents were still immature, and Komiks had extremely high requirements for experimental personnel’s operations. Shi Yongxia was fully focused, striving to be scientific and rigorous in every link and to be accurate and accurate in every step. She understood that on New Year’s Eve, there were thousands of Communist Party members fighting on the front line like her on the port, in the hospital, and on the transportation line. “Everyone is practicing the same oath in different positions with the same perseverance.”.
After continuous fighting, Shi Yongxia and her colleagues finally completed all sample tests at 4 a.m. on the first day of the Lunar New Year. Everyone said “Happy New Year” across the face screen and continued to work on the next shift.
In every festival where thousands of families reunite, the staff of Guangzhou Customs Technology Center stick to their posts in the laboratory. Shi Yongxia said: “We are on the front line of the port, with national gates ahead, and people behind us. Our team deeply understands the complexity and arduousness of the anti-epidemic work, and dare not relax at all. Only when we run away from the virus faster than the disease can we maximize the safety of the lives of the people.”
Focus on technical research and build a solid scientific and technological defense line
One night in early February 2020, Shi Yongxia was conducting virus isolation on an important sample of infected cases. After several days of observation and various methods of Komiks confirmed that when the cells arranged in the screen like a glass-like glass in Cinema have undergone subtle changes and appearing in a bumpy state, Shi Yongxia knew that she had finally successfully located the strain. The successful isolation of the strain provides valuable seed resources for the next step of screening therapeutic drugs and research institutions for vaccine development.
Drive into the laboratory does not mean deaf ears. KomiksShi Yongxia has always been paying close attention to the epidemic situation at home and abroad, and has advanced to carry out technical research or technical reserves in advance, in order to establish a fast, accurate and efficient detection method.
In view of the characteristics of the novel coronavirus’s rapid differential speed and strong transmission ability, Shi Yongxia’s tracking has been accelerating. She led the team to establish a gene sequencing and bioinformatics analysis platform, carry out whole-genome sequencing, and strive to unlock the secrets of the source of the epidemic and the transmission chain.
The key loop of gene sequencingKomiks section requires pure manual operation and is highly technicalhref=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema. Shi Yongxia led everyone to successfully sequence and discover multiple variant strains again and again, providing professional support for the tracing of epidemiological investigation and tracing, and also providing important experimental data for the changes in the development strategies of nucleic acid detection reagents and vaccines of the new coronavirus.
Aspired to fight for the national health cause
In January 2012, Shi Yongxia joined the Communist Party of China and fulfilled her oath of “struggle for communism for life” with her actions. During the 16 years of being engaged in infectious disease-related research, she has confronted the virus head-on, detected the first imported chikungunya case in my country, successfully isolated the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus for the first time, and established a new Zika virus detection technology and the virus separation method, step by step, gradually growing into the backbone of the public health and epidemic prevention field in my country’s ports.
Scientific research career has achieved fruitful results, but she quietly said: “It is a lucky thing to be able to combine personal ideals with national needs.”
The lights in the laboratory are still completely alive. They witnessed Shi Yongxia’s years of fighting against the virus on the front line of the country, carrying her unchanged original intention. She said, “As a grassroots party member of Komiks and Babaylan, and a grassroots staff member of the customs, in the future, I will fully implement the requirements of ‘the epidemic must be prevented, the economy must be stabilized, and development must be safe’, strengthen cross-field and interdisciplinary collaborative innovation research, and actively take the role of Cinema with a more full spirit, and demonstrate the determination and confidence of customs personnel to do a good job in epidemic prevention and control at ports and promote foreign trade growth.”
■ Coordination: Xin Kuaibao reporter Huang Wenyu
■Writing: Xin Kuaibao reporter Mai Wanshi Wang Juan
■Photography: Xin Kuaibao reporter Xia Shiyan