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Coronavirus Hong Kong
Hong KongHealth & Environment

Coronavirus: Hong Kong confirms first Delta case in 3 months, as officials race to track down source of ‘strange’ infection

  • Untraceable Delta case, first reported on Sunday, involves 23-year-old woman working at pet store with high viral load
  • Official committee also urges government to allow children as young as five to receive either of the two vaccines available in Hong Kong

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Health officials have urged people not to let down their guard against the virus. Photo: Xiaomei Chen
Gigi ChoyandVictor Ting

A pet store worker has become the first untraceable Delta case in Hong Kong in more than three months, health authorities have confirmed, although they are still trying to identify the origin of the “strange” infection.

Experts on Monday said they were exploring different possibilities for the source, including that it was a person infected during quarantine who “slipped through the cracks” and made it into the community or that the woman caught Covid-19 from a pet, although that route of transmission was viewed as unlikely.
Health advisers on the government’s joint scientific committee also called for making the two brands of Covid-19 vaccines administered in Hong Kong available to children as young as five, while the Home Affairs Department announced it would hand out 300,000 tests to residents in need in the coming weeks.
Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan. Photo: Edmond So
Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan. Photo: Edmond So

Officials are still investigating the source of the Delta case, which involves a 23-year-old woman who worked at the Little Boss pet shop in Causeway Bay and was first reported on Sunday.

“The untraceable case reported is strange because it involves the Delta variant,” Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said. “We need to do more work to figure out why.”

The infection was among seven confirmed cases on Monday. Three others involved close contacts of a previous patient, while the other three were imported.

The city’s overall Covid-19 tally stands at 13,048, with 213 related deaths. Fewer than 20 people tested preliminary-positive, nine of whom were patients believed to have been infected by a Pakistani woman who tested positive five days after completing her hotel quarantine.

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