I was recruited into the Vietnam News Agency and assigned to work as a resident reporter in Quang Ninh and Hai Duong. Hai Duong is the locality I have been most attached to during my 14 years as the Resident Bureau Chief.
I still remember the evening of January 27, 2021, when a few reporters were having dinner with the leaders of the Thanh Ha District Party Committee and People's Committee, we received information about a Covid-19 case at Poyun Electronics Company Limited in Chi Linh City. Immediately, my colleagues and I continuously contacted the authorities to verify the information as well as discussed with the provincial leaders about the direction of the information. Because the patient was a worker in a company with more than 2,000 employees, if not handled well, it could cause panic, and the workers would even return to their hometowns in many other provinces and cities, and the tracing work would be very difficult.
I was able to join the Provincial Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control. and many localities have asked me to join Zalo groups of leaders to inform about the epidemic situation as well as epidemic prevention work.
From then on, my colleagues and I rushed into the information war to prevent the epidemic. The most stressful time was when Hai Duong implemented the entire province-wide quarantine, the whole agency had only 2 people, so ensuring personal health and ensuring continuous information was a prerequisite. We worked almost forgetting about time, sleeping only about 4 hours a day, many times we just fell asleep on the desk, then woke up to write news and continue editing. In just the first month, 2 reporters of Vietnam News Agency in Hai Duong produced nearly 500 works. A colleague jokingly called us "war reporters in the heart of the epidemic".
Living and working in the heart of the epidemic, having to continuously take virus testing samples and anxiously waiting for results are unforgettable memories. And at that moment, the unforgettable images for me were children only 6-7 years old who had to leave their parents and family in quarantine areas; students of Hai Duong Medical Technical University, even though they were studying, even though their relatives were in the hospital or had just passed away, still volunteered to support the medical forces of the province and some other localities to take virus testing samples; images of farmers with faces darkened by the sun and wind, tears beside the fields of agricultural products past the harvest time but could not be sold...
At that time, not only did we take charge of the information, we also called on benefactors nationwide and together with the agency to support and help with supplies, medical equipment, rice, and food for the medical team and people in Hai Duong's epidemic prevention. Then the eggs, bunches of vegetables, masks, and bottles of disinfectant spray that friends and colleagues brought to the agency as gifts when they saw us working too hard were unforgettable memories throughout my career as a journalist. We always reminded each other: "Choosing journalism means accepting to commit, being ready to face dangers, and these things helped us hone our mettle to be worthy of being revolutionary journalists."
DINH MANH TU, Head of Vietnam News Agency's Resident Office in Hai DuongSource: https://baohaiduong.vn/chon-nghe-bao-la-chap-nhan-dan-than-khong-so-hiem-nguy-413924.html
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