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On hearing some 10,000 people were put under quarantine right on the other side of the river, township official Hou Yanmei in north China's Tianjin Municipality realized danger was imminent.
Hou, 50, is the deputy chief of Xiacang Township bordering Baodi District, where a cluster of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases were reported.
By Tuesday, Baodi District reported 60 COVID-19 cases, almost half of Tianjin's total. Over two-thirds of the cases were related to the Baodi department store, ranging from customers, salespeople to their families.
Xiacang Township started shutting down its 67 villages with people guarding the entrances and measuring body temperatures on the Chinese Lunar New Year which falls on Jan. 25 this year. Officials including Hou patrolled the area to persuade villagers to cancel their door-to-door visits for New Year greetings.
Hou said these steps kept villagers on high alert and helped cut off the route of cross-infection.
The cadres were nevertheless unnerved upon hearing the news about the cluster of cases at the nearby department store.
"A news clip analyzing how the cases were tracked and finally connected to the store went viral, straining my every nerve," Hou recalled.
The township then combed all the villages, finding some 2,000 people who had been to Baodi around the Lunar New Year. An urgent task was to find out the close contacts who had been to the department store.
A village cadre told Hou a family of five in his village had lied about their whereabouts.
"They were reluctant to admit they had been to the store for fear of being discriminated against by the villagers," she recalled. "I understand their anxiety."
The family was quarantined for 14 days at home, with village cadres measuring their body temperatures twice a day and delivering fruits, vegetables and other necessities.
To avoid cross-infection, Party cadres and volunteers also ran errands for the villagers, buying vegetables and paying utilities.
To date, no COVID-19 cases have been reported in Xiacang Township.
Hou felt sorry for her daughter because the family's travel plans had to be postponed once again. Her daughter, a college student, seemed to have grown used to the disappointment as Hou is always busy.
"I felt very comforted when she came to hug me after a long exhausting day, and my husband always cooked something different for dinner, waiting for me to come back," she said with a smile.
For more than a month, Hou has not taken a day off, nor does she plan to.
"The villagers are about to start plowing. The winter wheat needs watering. We have to ensure agricultural production while continuing the fight against the epidemic," she said.
(by Xinhua writers Lyu Qiuping, Yin Siyuan)
