Hong Kong third wave: city goes a week of fewer than 100 Covid-19 cases a day, but death toll rises
- City marks seven straight days of double-digit rises to its Covid-19 total after last month’s run of 100-plus new infections daily
- Three women and two men who caught the coronavirus died on Sunday
Hong Kong’s third wave of Covid-19 continued to show signs of slowing down as the city marked a week of recording only double-digit daily increases to its infected tally, with health authorities on Sunday confirming 72 new cases and five more deaths.
The latest figures took the city’s coronavirus case total to 4,079, with 52 related deaths, but the tally looks set to rise further as about 40 others tested preliminary positive, including a patient who only returned such a reading on his third screening, as well as a police officer potentially in contact with scores of colleagues.
The city last month witnessed an extended run of 100-plus new cases per day, prompting the Hong Kong government to introduce its toughest social-distancing measures to date, before advancing plans this week for mass Covid-19 testing, which one expert suggested on Sunday should be rolled out under citywide lockdown.
“Unless a curfew is imposed to keep all those tested indoors, to wait for the whole population’s screening to be complete, it would be difficult to prevent reinfection,” president of the Hong Kong Medical Association Dr Gabriel Choi Kin told a radio programme.
Among the new infections, 63 were locally transmitted and the origins of 24 of those had not been traced yet.
Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the centre for health protection’s communicable disease branch, told a press conference that as many as 170 police officers would have to be tested if an officer from the police tactical unit (PTU) who tested preliminary positive for the virus was later confirmed to be infected.