Courier services restarted after China's biggest holiday Spring Festival ended with measures to protect staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic. /Xinhua
China's courier services delivered 0.49 million tons of supplies across the country during the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, including medical goods, food and life support devices like ECMO, and no courier personnel contracted the virus while working, according to Ma Junsheng, director general of China's State Post Bureau, the government agency that regulates the country's postal service, China Post.
Ma, who was speaking at a State Council Information Office press conference on poverty reduction on Monday, outlined how the courier service system conducted virus prevention and protection measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to statistics, up to today, "58 deliverymen got infected among all four million couriers in China, and none of the 58 people were infected during work," said Ma.
"From January to August this year, we completed express delivery services worth over 1.2 trillion yuan (0.17 trillion U.S. dollars), and the total income reached 680 billion yuan. The number of delivered goods increased by 25 percent to 48 billion."
In the fight against COVID-19, China set two special access for people who were in urgent need. One was for domestic medical supplies delivery; all those goods were tagged "emergency" and delivered through special channels. The other one was for international deliveries. All goods from overseas were received via that channel and distributed to destination cities without complicated formalities.
Approximately 0.49 million tons of goods were delivered through these two channels from January 23 to June 10, 2020. It was the supply chain frontline. When medics risked their lives to save people from COVID-19 around the clock, couriers across China were experiencing a similar life-and-death battle to get the goods delivered on time.
"We have four million people working in this industry nationwide, and they contact at least 100 people per day. So far, no one got the coronavirus due to work after strict screenings and examinations," Ma said.
