A citizen’s duty or complete waste of time? Hong Kong residents explain why they either join or avoid mass Covid-19 test
- For homemaker Yuen Mi-ling, the screening is part of her responsibility in helping the city get past the pandemic
- Others, such as taxi driver Yau Cheong-him, are worried about infecting passengers, while some residents vow to skip the ‘wasteful’ process entirely
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Hong Kong launches universal Covid-19 tests for residents
People did occasionally bunch together as they lined up outside some of the 141 collection centres, some arriving early despite the online booking system allocating half-hour time slots. Elsewhere, elderly residents struggled to climb long flights of stairs to reach the testing areas.
But the screenings took less than 10 minutes on average. Most of the participants the Post talked to shrugged off the physical experience, with a few even calling the test comfortable.
The centres, set up across the city’s 18 districts, opened their doors at 8am. Upon arrival, people underwent a temperature check and were instructed to stand 1.5 metres apart while waiting inside a hall before being directed to one of several partitioned areas, where medical staff took a nose and throat swab.