A team of experts at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) expects the fifth wave to continue to worsen, peaking “in the coming week or so” at nearly 183,000 infections per day, although officials are only likely to be able to confirm 35,121 cases. They were among those who said it might be wiser to hold off on universal testing until case counts began to fall.

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On his second day in Hong Kong, Dr Liang Wannian, leader of the National Health Commission’s Covid Response Expert Team and the highest-ranking mainland health official to visit the city to help tackle the spiralling outbreak, said the situation remained severe.

“Overall, Hong Kong’s epidemic situation is rather severe and complicated,” Liang said after a full-day meeting with local health officials. “There is a big challenge in the health care and medical treatment systems.”

Liang said he and other mainland experts had discussed with Hong Kong officials how different epidemic control systems could work better together. They also touched on how information about public health and treatment could be integrated better.

Sources familiar with discussions on lockdown plans said the administration was seeking to compress the universal testing period from a planned 15 or 21 days to just nine.

“Each resident will be required to undergo three tests during the mass testing,” a source said. “The mass testing is expected to start after the middle of this month, and a large-scale lockdown will be imposed during the period.”

The source added: “We are still deliberating different scales of lockdown. Exemptions will be granted for personnel responsible for maintaining essential services.”

The stock market is expected to remain open in the event of a lockdown, though most other non-essential workplaces will be asked to close.

“The current plan is to exempt financial regulators, and allow a certain portion of staff in various financial services sectors, including banks, securities and insurance, to be permitted to attend to business,” one insider said, adding the government had not gone into details on quotas for exemptions.

A Securities and Futures Commission spokesman said if Hong Kong implemented a lockdown during mandatory testing for the whole population, it was confident licensed institutions and the market could operate normally.

Exemptions will also be granted to frontline medical staff, the disciplined services, journalists, and the staff of care homes and financial institutions, among others.

“Residents will be allowed [out] to buy food and medical supplies, but we are still considering different options, such as whether residents are only allowed to buy food in supermarkets or if takeaway is allowed. But the latter option would mean some restaurants may still need to open,” a second source said.

With more help from the central government, another source said, the screening exercise might even be further shortened to less than nine days, so the inconvenience could be further mitigated.

A government spokesman noted that the finance industry in many other jurisdictions that had implemented lockdowns was not affected during the exercise.

“The government must take into account the characteristics of the finance industry and safeguard Hong Kong’s status as an international financial centre when carrying out the compulsory universal testing,” he said.

​​“Similarly, other examples showed the public’s basic needs such as food and necessities had to be taken care of, and medical treatment throughout. The public does not need to be worried, rush to panic buy and hoard related materials.”

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Details of the lockdown emerged as HKU medical researchers, including government pandemic adviser Gabriel Leung, revised their epidemic modelling again, estimating 1.7 million people had already caught Covid-19 since the start of the fifth wave in late December – roughly nine times as many as had been reported.

Daily deaths are now projected to peak at around 156 in mid-March, for a total of 4,546 by the end of April, assuming the situation remained relatively unchanged.

“Therefore, if compulsory universal testing were to be implemented pursuant to the ‘dynamic zero-covid policy’, it should be deployed towards mid- to late April when case numbers are anticipated to already be at very low levels in order to maximise its utility in achieving true elimination, or ‘zero covid’,” the researchers said.

HKU’s Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, a government adviser on the pandemic, agreed that April would be a better choice, as the lockdown could only be effective if there were sufficient isolation and treatment facilities to deal with the cases uncovered.

“The timing of this exercise is very important,” he said. “This is usually only useful at the beginning or near the end of an outbreak, when the number of confirmed cases and close contacts is more manageable. However, the later this exercise is held, the morbidity and mortality in the unvaccinated elderly and chronically ill will get higher.”

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He agreed that every positive case identified in the universal testing should be isolated in separate facilities, but said it “all depends on logistics” and whether the government would be able to do so.

Another adviser, Professor David Hui Shu-cheong, suggested that the mass testing should be held in late March when the peak of the fifth wave was expected to be over.

“By that time, the purpose of testing is to detect remaining asymptomatic cases in the city and hopefully we can bring the fifth wave to an end,” he said.

Hui added that if there were more cases than isolation spots, some residents with lower risks and minor symptoms should quarantine at home.

“The elderly, residents with chronic illnesses or living in subdivided households should be prioritised [for admission to government facilities], while others who can take care of themselves can do home isolation,” he said.

Besides Leung, Yuen and Hui, medical experts including HKU’s Professor Ivan Hung Fan-ngai and former Hospital Authority chief executive Leung Pak-yin told the Post they agreed mass-testing initiatives were generally more useful when outbreaks were either emerging or winding down.

Chief Secretary John Lee Ka-chiu on Tuesday stopped short of confirming that a lockdown was coming, but said details would be announced in due course.

“We absolutely understand that citizens are eager to know the details. We also know that we must inform everyone ahead of time so that they can make preparations,” he said.

“The government will definitely do our best in ensuring supplies of food and daily necessities, so everyone should not worry about it. At this moment, Hong Kong has sufficient supplies.”

More anti-pandemic medical supplies from the mainland had arrived in Hong Kong, commerce minister Edward Yau Tang-wah said. The task force he leads has now received 18 million rapid antigen test kits, 320,000 pulse oximeters, 31.8 million N95 and KN95 masks and 350,000 boxes of Chinese medicine.

Five of the latest 32,597 infections were imported while the rest were locally transmitted, pushing the city’s overall tally of confirmed cases to 238,377.

Dr Albert Au Ka-wing of the Centre for Health Protection said Tuesday’s infection figures were similar to the previous day’s, when 34,466 cases were confirmed, but some residents might not take part in the official PCR tests after authorities changed their approach and recognised rapid test results.

“Therefore the figure cannot fully reflect the actual infection numbers,” he said, adding officials would launch an online system for residents to log their positive rapid test results as soon as possible.

In terms of geographical distribution, Au said the five districts with the most cases were Yuen Long (12.7 per cent), Sha Tin (11 per cent), Sham Shui Po (8.6 per cent), Kwun Tong (8.5 per cent) and Yau Tsim Mong (7.8 per cent).

The Hospital Authority said due to the worsening epidemic, North Lantau Hospital would dedicate all its 160 beds to Covid-19 patients from Wednesday.

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Cheung, Gigi Choy and Nadia Lam