Chinese nurses in Wuhan, a city central to the early reported outbreak, shared pictures in early 2020 on social media to show the marks and bruises on their faces left by the protective gear they're wearing while treating the dangerous disease.
The pictures shocked the world, as they depict not only the medical staff's facial wounds but also their exhaustion. After being shared on Twitter, the pictures went quickly viral.
According to Chinese media, the medical staff in Wuhan are working nonstop. Some of them are so tired that they fall asleep on the hospital chairs and even on the floor.
Image credits: PDChina
The portraits preserve a moment of working life
The close views draw attention to faces that protective equipment usually covers. They make the physical demands of work visible, but a photograph alone cannot establish a person’s shift length, diagnosis or the working conditions of an entire hospital. Keeping the image credits and early-2020 date attached gives the portraits a clearer historical setting.
What the toll on health workers turned out to be
In mid-February 2020 China’s National Health Commission gave the first official figures for infections among medical staff. On 14 February 2020 the vice minister Zeng Yixin told a news conference that 1,716 health workers had been infected, 1,102 of them in Wuhan and about 400 elsewhere in Hubei province, and that six had died. Health workers made up 3.8 per cent of all confirmed infections in China at that point. More than 20,000 doctors and nurses had been sent to Hubei from other parts of the country.
Doctors and nurses described severe shortages of masks and protective suits. One Wuhan nurse had not been home for more than two weeks, staying in a hotel near the hospital so as not to infect her two-year-old daughter, and a doctor said most medical workers were working too much to cope with the intensity of care.
Sources: Inquirer/Associated Press, February 2020: China says 6 health workers died from new coronavirus, 1,716 infected Al Jazeera, 17 February 2020: Scared and exposed: Rise in virus cases among China’s medics
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