Photos: Nanfang Daily

A photo of a doctor working late into the night at a nucleic acid testing site has been popular on Sina Weibo since Tuesday.

In this photo, a doctor in a white protective suit and a protective mask is holding a mobile phone to report epidemic data, and the light above her head shines down, as if she is wearing an angel’s halo.

This resonates with the popular description of doctors during the epidemic as “angels in white.”

The photo was taken around 11 pm on January 7.

Zeng Donghua, a doctor at the Nankeng Community Health Service Center of the Second People's Hospital of Longgang, had taken nucleic acid samples from 400 residents. She was waiting for more residents who would get off work late at night.

Due to the lack of light at night, the residential compound’s staff members temporarily borrowed lights. Zeng then sat under the lights. This scene happened to be photographed by a resident named Zhang Wanchun and uploaded to the internet.

After receiving an emergency notification, the Nankeng Community Health Service Center immediately took action, and its medical staff quickly arrived at assigned residential housing compounds to carry out large-scale nucleic acid screening.

Zhang was on the way to get a nucleic acid test.

"I intended to take a picture for my family to see that everyone is still working on nucleic acid testing even though it was so late," Zhang recalled.

"After taking the photo, I noticed that the light and halo above the doctor's head are circular. Yes, it seems to be a halo, which happens to honor the doctor as an 'angel in white,’" said Zhang.

"The medical staff under the lights are so beautiful! Thank them for their hard work," Zhang added.

The Weibo post been viewed more than 599,000 times as of Sunday.

Zeng is just one of the thousands of medical staff in Longgang racing against the invisible virus in the streets and alleys of the city.

(Compiled by Dong Feng)