NANNING -- Despite wearing a mask, He Xiaoling took several deep breaths upon stepping out of the hospital building. She had longed for fresh air free from the smell of disinfectant.

He, 55, is the head cleaner in the Fourth People's Hospital of Nanning City, a designated hospital for the treatment of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the regional capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

She had stayed in the hospital from mid-February when she was assigned to the isolation ward section.

In addition to the medics fighting in the front line, cleaners like He have risked their lives on duty in hospitals since the outbreak of the epidemic, disinfecting the wards and disposing of medical waste.

Initially in charge of disinfecting ambulances, He began to feel the tension on Jan. 23. By then she had arranged the Lunar New Year holiday work schedule for the cleaners before going home.

"I had barely finished dinner when the hospital called me to return," she recalled.

On the same day, Wuhan, the former epicenter of the outbreak in central China's Hubei Province, was locked down with all public transport suspended, an unprecedented move to contain the epidemic.

Instructed by the medics of the infection department, He put on a protective suit, an isolation gown, goggles, gloves and shoe covers before working.

"The ambulances kept flowing in, with lights shining and sirens ringing. I will never forget that night," she recalled.

She and her colleagues handled the protective gear and towels deserted by medics one batch after another till the next early morning.

Realizing the seriousness of the epidemic, He scratched the holiday schedule and called her local colleagues who had been home for the holiday to return.

"To my surprise, except those who were stranded in the closed-off villages or had the elderly and children in the family to take care of, everybody returned," she said.

She said one of her colleagues had to sleep at the hospital dorm because his landlord did not allow him to go back for fear of being infected.

The cleaners took turns to be on duty at the isolation ward section, with each shift working for two weeks, followed by a quarantine for another two weeks.

Some of them were scared. "What if I get infected there," He remembered being asked. She said it was understandable as people are always afraid of unknown things, like the virus.

Her own shift at the section started on Feb. 19.

At 5:25 a.m., she got up at the resting zone of the section. After a simple rinse, she disinfected the doctors' on-duty offices, nurse stations, elevators and stairways.

At 7:30 a.m., she started putting on protective gear before entering the wards, the toughest part of the day.

In the wards, she had to thoroughly disinfect the treatment trolleys, apparatuses, the ground, the toilets and special passageways with disinfectant spray, ultraviolet radiation and antiseptic wipes.

Before leaving the section, she had to take off different layers of protective suits at different rooms before taking a shower. Each step had to be followed by meticulous hand washing. The whole process took at least half an hour.

"Every time I took off the protective gear, my clothes and hair would be soaked with sweat," she said.

Unlike ordinary medical waste that was packed and transferred to the garbage room before pickup by trucks, the waste from the isolation wards needed to be contained in paper boxes, entirely sealed by strips, put into dumpsters and disinfected before carried out. The waste would be directly carried away by vehicles from professional handlers. Used protective suits had to be disinfected as well.

According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), China had disposed of 182,000 tonnes of medical waste since late January amid the fight against the epidemic.

As of March 21, China's medical waste disposal capacity had reached 6,066.8 tonnes per day, up from 4,902.8 tonnes each day before the epidemic outbreak, the MEE said in a statement.

On the very day He started her shift in the isolation wards, five people were cured and discharged from the hospital, so she got a nickname -- "the lucky woman."

She felt comforted when more and more patients in the ward were cured, including a three-month-old infant.

She used to hear the baby crying when his mother left the room for a while.

"On seeing I was approaching to pick up the garbage, he stopped crying and started smiling at me," she recalled. "I can deeply understand the anxiety of his mom because I am also a mother, so I kept him company for as long as I could."

He's son, 27, often called, asking her to take extra care. "I didn't want him to worry about me, so I seldom mentioned my work in the hospital."

In early March, when the last patient was cured and walked out of the isolation ward, He finally ended her shift and started a 14-day quarantine.

Among the 254 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Guangxi, only two were still being treated in hospital, both of whom were imported cases, the regional health commission said Wednesday.

"Now that the spring has come, I am desperate to have an outing with my family, without wearing a mask," she said.