Hong Kong third wave: authorities weigh lockdown after 73 new Covid-19 cases reported

Authorities turning to unprecedented measures, including requiring people to wear masks indoors at public venues, possibly starting this week

As crisis pushes frontline workers to limit, officials admit laboratory mix-up wrongly labelled a woman positive and another negative

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A lone person walks along a deserted street in the usually bustling nightclub area of Lan Kwai Fong in Central on Monday. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 12:22pm, 20 Jul 2020Updated: 10:22am, 21 Jul 2020

Hong Kong will have to impose a lockdown if the resurging number of coronavirus infections keeps rising, health authorities have warned, after 73 cases emerged on Monday following a record high at the weekend.

In a sign of the toll the escalating health crisis is taking on medical workers, authorities admitted overworked staff at a laboratory had wrongly entered data that resulted in a woman mistakenly testing positive for the virus and sent to an isolation ward in hospital, while another patient with Covid-19 tested negative, although she was already being treated in seclusion.

The government is ramping up its strategy to contain the spread of the disease, including requiring people to wear masks indoors at public venues and ordering civil servants to work from home. With isolation beds at public hospitals now approaching capacity, authorities are prepared to impose a lockdown.

“If the trend of cases continues to go up, of course there will be further stringent measures, including a lockdown,” said Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch at the Centre for Health Protection.

Hong Kong is battling a third wave of infections, an overwhelming number contracted locally, many from an unknown origin. The latest figures are in line with that trend, with 66 cases coming from the community, 27 of which were untraced, while seven were imported. More than 100 infections were recorded on Sunday, the first time the number crossed into triple digits since the pandemic emerged in Hong Kong in January.

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