Hong Kong third wave: no symptoms or link to confirmed Covid-19 case? Getting tested will only overburden system, health official says

More than 4,000 city residents have rushed to emergency departments and general clinics at public hospitals in the past week, authorities say

But nearly everyone confirmed positive in recent surge has fit into one of the two categories, explain experts, who say test won’t provide ‘sense of security’

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Amid a third wave of Covid-19 infections, numerous Hongkongers have flooded to the city’s hospitals for testing – many of them unnecessarily. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 8:00pm, 20 Jul 2020Updated: 9:49am, 21 Jul 2020

Hong Kong residents without symptoms or links to confirmed Covid-19 cases should not head to hospitals for testing, a city health official said on Monday, saying it would only serve to strain an already overburdened health system.

The Centre for Health Protection’s Dr Chaung Shuk-kwan made the appeal amid a recent flood of Hongkongers to public and private hospitals seeking virus tests.

“I urge those who do not have symptoms and are not linked to infected persons … do not rush to go take a test, as they will rob other urgent patients of the ability to get screenings,” Chaung said at a press conference.

Residents prepare saliva samples at Hong Kong’s Ping Shek Estate, where a rice porridge and noodle shop cook tested positive for Covid-19. Photo: Winson Wong

Her comments echoed remarks by city health advisers Dr Keiji Fukuda, Dr David Hui Shu-cheong and Dr Yuen Kwok-yung, who said that taking a test without at least one of those factors at play would not grant residents “any sense of security” and could stretch health services.

“The test will only prove that you are negative at this moment, but it does not mean you will not get the virus the next day, if you have not passed the incubation period,” said Hui, a respiratory medicine expert at Chinese University.