At 11:00 a.m. on May 31, Luu Thi Ha, a senior student at the Vietnam Academy of Traditional Medicine and Pharmacy, and nearly 30 people were still at full speed taking test samples for residents of village 7, Tang Tien commune, Viet Yen district.

The first time she fought against the epidemic, Ha was quite confused and the harsh conditions took her a long time to adapt.

`Last year, I felt sad when I watched TV and saw the scene of doctors in Wuhan, China with masks on their faces, blisters and family separation. I didn’t think one day I would experience this feeling,` said the 22-year-old girl.

Ha and her friends’ hands were white after many hours of working with gloves in the hot weather at the center of the epidemic.

Determining the large workload, everyone divided the group into two to rotate to ensure progress, ready to go to hot spots according to the mobilization of the Provincial Center for Disease Control.

`Since the outbreak, I decided to stay in Hanoi to join the volunteer group to help with the epidemic. If I didn’t go to the same school, I would go with another group. Yet I was almost eliminated because I weighed only 39 kg.

Ha said that the group had 29 female friends and 7 male friends, so they had difficulty with health and physical fitness.

The group also received help from the people in the form of hometown gifts such as cakes, milk, and filtered water, giving them more motivation to overcome the weather to complete the work.

After many hours of work, everyone is exhausted.

Before leaving, she didn’t dare tell her family.

`Thousands of people volunteered to go into the epidemic. As a future doctor, I don’t want to be on the sidelines,` Ha said and promised to take good care of herself.

Since arriving in Bac Giang, every day she took advantage of her lunch break to call home to `report the situation`.

`Even though I don’t know the date of my return, with every day that passes, I feel more mature by contributing to the community and the country,` Ha confided.

Ha and her friends wrote happy sentences on the back of their shirts, helping to forget about fatigue while working.