Coronavirus: Hong Kong virus experts urge quarantine hotels to boost room ventilation, corridor air supply following Silka Seaview cluster
- Professor David Hui says that hotels are not designed for disease control and recommends ventilation upgrades to ensure ‘at least six air changes per hour’
- Hotel guests should also be reminded to close windows when they open their door to reduce the risk of transmitting the virus, according to a HKU engineering professor
Hong Kong health experts have urged quarantine hotels to pump more fresh air into high-risk corridors and enhance ventilation in guest rooms to minimise the risk of spreading Covid-19 in the wake of a cluster caused by cross-infections.
“For quarantine hotels, the more ventilation facilities they have for more air changes, the better,” said government pandemic adviser and Chinese University Professor David Hui Shu-cheong.
Hui said that while hotels were not designed for disease control like hospitals, they could install more ventilation facilities to ensure “at least six air changes per hour” in guest rooms and corridors.
“If they can’t do so in their guest rooms, they can put in place more [high-efficiency air filters] to purify the air,” he added.
The advice followed the emergence of an expanding cluster involving at least 56 people and a school, which was started by a cross-infection at the Silka Seaview Hotel in Yau Ma Tei last week, where six guests staying in four different rooms across two separate floors tested positive for the Omicron variant.
The Silka Seaview has temporarily ceased operations, with all guests being transferred to other locations and reservations no longer available for booking.