Coronavirus: Hong Kong ends 38-day streak of zero local untraceable Covid-19 cases as police officer confirmed to be infected

Apart from locally infected officer, health authorities confirm six new coronavirus cases, five of them brought in by recent arrivals from Indonesia

Vaccinated senior business executives exempted from quarantine should still be made to take extra antibody tests, government pandemic adviser says

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Hong Kong cannot assume zero infections has been completely achieved, an expert says. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 4:58pm, 1 Jun 2021Updated: 1:10am, 2 Jun 2021

Hong Kong ended a 38-day streak of zero local untraceable cases as a police officer was confirmed to be infected with Covid-19 on Tuesday, dampening hopes that the city had finally put a lid on its fourth wave of the pandemic.

The setback came as a health expert advising the government on the pandemic said vaccinated senior business executives exempted from quarantine upon arriving in the city should still be made to take extra antibody tests, and the exemption should also apply to others seen as making significant contributions to the economy, including foreign domestic helpers.

Apart from the locally infected police officer, health authorities confirmed six new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, five of them brought in by recent arrivals from Indonesia and one from the United Arab Emirates.

That took the city’s overall tally of confirmed infections to 11,848, with 210 related deaths.

According to the Centre for Health Protection (CHP), the 35-year-old policeman from the force’s Wan Chai division was now a confirmed case despite negative test results earlier upon his admission to hospital. He had not been found with any antibodies yet.

Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the CHP’s communicable diseases branch, said the policeman’s case suggested there were still hidden transmissions in the community.

“We do not currently have any other explanation for his infection, so we have categorised it as a local case with an untraceable source,” she said, adding that his samples had been sent to the University of Hong Kong for genetic sequencing.