A Dongguan student's fight against Covid-19 in the UK
2020-07-02 10:52     Source : Dongguan Today

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Li's schedule

Dongguan native Xiaojia Li is a PhD candidate studying Medicine at the University of Manchester in UK. Li was in Manchester during the Covid-19 outbreak, working hard on her PhD degree. She witnessed first-hand how the outbreak affected locals in Manchester and involved herself in coping with it.

In 2020, the outbreak of the novel coronavirus spread fear across the globe. Overseas students were afflicted thrice by academic stress, fearful prejudice and the fear of being infected. In the face of this, most students choose to return home. Given that Li had only arrived recently in the UK in January, and confirmed UK Covid-19 cases were high at the time, Li thought that staying in the dorm was much safer. "The most important thing was that direct flights from Manchester to China were cancelled, and transfer flights are a greater risk." Li added, "and this year is the first year of my PhD, so I'd rather stay in the UK and take precautions."

In fact, the situation in the UK did not bode well at that time, and began to test the psychological soundness of the students, causing anxiety or worse. When we spoke with Li, she was preparing her biweekly volunteer work helping people ease tension and distribute information about Covid-19. "With the spreading of Covid-19, panic shot up." In fact, Li was one of the victims. From March, she has been suffering insomnia, poor appetite and even auditory hallucinations. "Our school has temporarily closed all teaching buildings, libraries and labs, all the courses have be put on hold. Unfortunately, our laboratory is in a hospital which has been commandeered as a testing laboratory for Covid-19, so none of us can conduct any experiments. There are no lessons for PhD students. Instead, we just have lab group meetings, which are held online via Zoom. For these reasons, it may take me more than 3 years to complete my PhD degree which was originally scheduled for three years. It did make me feel more pressure. What's more, as confirmed cases rose, the airport was partly shut down, I lost my part-time job, and economic pressure soon followed. All these things make me very anxious."

Editor: 郑思慧