Zhu Haixiu is a nurse from the intensive care unit of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province in south China. The 22-year-old left for Wuhan in the central province of Hubei, the city hit the hardest by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as part of a medical team on January 24, the Chinese New Year’s Eve.

The dark circles around her eyes from fatigue were captured by the lens of China Central Television during an interview with patients and medical staff on February 11 at Hankou Hospital, where Zhu was working.

Asked whether she was afraid, she said she was at the beginning but after seeing the situation in the city, she no longer is. When reporters asked her to talk to her parents in front of the camera, she politely declined, saying it would make her cry and she did not want to cry because it would make the protective goggles she was wearing blurry, and then she would not be able to see well when she went back to