Coronavirus: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam calls for calm after residents panic over possible lockdown
- Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan does not rule out possibility of large-scale lockdown
- Monday’s record-breaking 34,466 cases push overall number of infections to 205,780
Authorities on Monday confirmed more than 34,000 new infections and 124 coronavirus-related deaths, as Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said her government was still assessing the extent of restrictions to impose, and urged the public not to be misled by rumours.
Residents escalated their panicked buying of basic goods and groceries, cleaning out supermarket shelves, after Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee did not rule out the possibility of a large-scale lockdown.
“We are still discussing, from the perspective of public health, how to make the best use of universal testing, we must reduce the flow of people to a certain extent … and citizens should not go out,” Chan said on a radio programme.
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Asked if the city would need to announce the suspension of work and the stock market, Chan would only say that the government would monitor the situation and refer to the opinion of mainland Chinese experts.
“We are currently examining and judging to what extent the flow of people should be controlled,” she added.