Time to salute officer guarding Shanghai's gate
Wang Wei is proud to serve.
Traffic officer Wang Wei had only 14 hours to prepare before 2pm on January 27 when all people who were due to enter Shanghai by expressway would be required to have their temperatures checked.
Wang, a 41-year-old who guards Shanghai’s west gate at Anting Town in Jiading District, was entrusted with the task of enforcing the measure with his colleagues at the Huaqiao check station on the G2 Expressway during the height of the novel coronavirus epidemic.
Completing 56 days at his post as the temporary director of the check station, Wang said he had never worked so intensely, but was encouraged by the support of his co-workers and family.
The check station was one of nine for road traffic into Shanghai during the epidemic.
Wang said he slept only two hours before the implementation of the measure.
“We finished setting up the site by 3am, and ensured that all markings on the ground and signs were painted by 1:30pm,” he recalled. “I took 327 calls within 14 hours.”
From 2pm on January 27, vehicles entering Shanghai started to line up in eight queues.
The queues soon reached 10 kilometers, Wang recalled.
“We had only 50 hands on the first day, including police officers, assistants, medical workers and volunteers. Later our team was expanded to include 240 people working on two shifts daily, but we still had some technical problems to solve,” he said.
As temperature measurements were affected by the air-conditioning in vehicles, Wang asked his colleagues to walk along the queues to remind people to open windows.
Later, when all people entering Shanghai were required to fill in a form and show a QR code when going through the check stations, Wang arranged for quick entry for those who had been checked while in line.
“We first reduced the queues to 3 kilometers, and gradually to at the most 1 kilometer in length,” he said.
Wang has had prior experience.
During the SARS epidemic in 2003, similar measures were implemented at expressway entries to Shanghai.
“Only 18,000 to 20,000 vehicles were checked when I worked in six months back then, but this time we checked about 1.5 million people in 950,000 vehicles within two months,” he said.
Wang was thankful that almost all people who went through the check station were cooperative and understanding.
Back home, his family was used to him not coming back to sleep. But to protect them, Wang would leave his coat in the car and carefully disinfect himself.
“Shanghai never shut its doors during the epidemic while keeping itself safe, and I’m proud to be part of the effort to make this possible,” Wang said.
