Hong Kong third wave: infection of three health workers at Tuen Mun Eye Centre sparks Covid-19 cluster fears as city marks grim milestone
- Three clerks in contact with hundreds of patients at Tuen Mun Eye Centre among 64 new cases in the city
- Number of people confirmed with Covid-19 in Hong Kong surpasses the 1,755 recorded for severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003
Sixty cases were locally transmitted including a woman who shared the same ward as three people with Covid-19 at a hospital that recorded the city’s 12th coronavirus-related death on Saturday.
Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, an infectious disease expert from the University of Hong Kong, said all three of the infected clerks at Tuen Mun Eye Centre were on the front line serving the public. “Each clerk may have interacted with 200 different patients a day,” he said.
With more than 60 people who tested preliminary positive awaiting confirmation, the city’s Covid-19 total climbed to 1,777 – above the 1,755 infections it recorded 17 years ago during the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic.
Continuing the alarming third wave trend, with many untraceable cases, Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Centre for Health Protection’s communicable disease branch, told a press briefing that 35 of Saturday’s new local infections were of unknown origin.
In the Tuen Mun clinic, a clerk working in one of its ground-floor offices on Friday tested positive for the coronavirus before two of her colleagues, based on the same level, were also confirmed as infected.