Coronavirus: Hong Kong confirms 6,646 new cases as government considers mass at-home testing exercise to help ‘gauge infection situation’
- A source says the mass at-home testing will serve as a ‘voluntary and supplementary’ measure, and will not replace an official universal screening exercise
- Latest infections mark sixth consecutive day city’s daily caseload is below 10,000
Hong Kong residents may be asked to take part in mass at-home Covid-19 testing via kits set to be distributed from Saturday to help the government better gauge the current epidemic situation, the city’s leader has said.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor floated the possibility at her regular coronavirus press conference on Thursday after being asked whether the government still planned to pursue a controversial compulsory universal testing drive.
“Since we are distributing rapid antigen tests in the anti-epidemic service bags, we would like to explore whether we can make use of this convenient and accurate tool … so that we can gauge the infection situation,” Lam said, referring to packs of supplies and medicine that would be handed out to all Hong Kong residents.
Lam added that daily caseloads, though on the decline, were still too high to conduct universal screening via government-run testing sites, noting the healthcare system was unlikely to be able to cope with the new infections the exercise might uncover.
The city confirmed 6,646 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, the sixth consecutive day the caseload was below the 10,000 mark. Another 119 deaths were reported, including 17 fatalities that had not been taken into account due to a backlog.
The overall tally of confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic stands at 1,157,415, while the total number of related deaths has reached 7,825.
The government will begin distributing the anti-epidemic service bags – containing 20 rapid tests, 20 KN95 masks and two boxes of proprietary traditional Chinese medicine – to nearly 3 million households on Saturday. Lam said it would take about a week to hand out all the packages.
Details of the proposed mass rapid testing exercise would be announced if and when the plans were confirmed, Lam added.
A source said the mass rapid testing, which would be undertaken by residents on a single day, would serve as a “voluntary and supplementary” measure, and would not replace the universal screening exercise. The source noted that experts had suggested the best time for the universal screening would be when daily caseloads were consistently in the three-digit range.
At another daily briefing, Undersecretary for Food and Health Dr Chui Tak-yi said rapid tests would be an effective tool for mass screening, and enable authorities to detect and treat elderly cases earlier.
“We encourage our elderly residents to do these tests at home, as these self-administered tests only need a short time to complete … and could allow authorities to provide earlier treatments if positive cases are detected,” he said.
Chui also said an online registration platform for recovered patients would be launched in May. It would help avoid the confusion of individuals using various types of electronic and paper documents to prove their vaccination status or recovery from Covid-19.
While non-mandatory rapid testing would help individuals examine if they were infected, respiratory expert Dr Leung Chi-chiu said it would be less useful as an indicator of Hong Kong’s infection trend.
“Rapid testing is voluntary, not to mention also less sensitive than polymerase chain reaction tests [and] thus not a useful and realistic way to understand the overall situation in the city,” he said.
“Instead, sewage surveillance and conducting serology antibody testing over a certain population would be more useful,” Leung added, suggesting authorities test infection status by selecting a certain proportion from different age groups.
The government earlier announced a suspension of the universal screening exercise on March 21. Lam said mainland Chinese and Hong Kong experts had concluded that public resources should not be spent on such an operation when the daily caseload remained high. Instead, it should be carried out towards the end of the current fifth wave of infections.
Lam later told lawmakers she did not have a crystal ball to predict when the testing could be rolled out.
Pro-establishment lawmaker Alice Mak Mei-kuen said the “mass universal rapid testing” should not replace the screening done through PCR tests. She also noted some low-income families could be hesitant to report their infection, for fear of being sent to quarantine centres and having their livelihoods disrupted.
Jack Chan Jick-chi, acting secretary for home affairs, told a radio programme on Thursday that each Hong Kong household would be entitled to one package of supplies, assuming it had three to four members, while larger ones would be allowed to collect additional kits as needed. Special arrangements would be made for people sharing living spaces in subdivided units.
He added that volunteers and civil servants deployed to package and distribute the kits would be required to be vaccinated and to conduct rapid Covid-19 tests before performing their duties.
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At Thursday’s press conference, Lam also said Covid-19 patients from care homes for the elderly with mild or no symptoms could be sent directly to government isolation centres rather than the emergency wards of public hospitals. The move was aimed at relieving pressure on the city’s overburdened public healthcare system.
As of Wednesday, figures from the Social Welfare Department showed that only 616 beds, or 30 per cent of the 2,154 beds in seven facilities, were occupied.
Among the seven isolation facilities, the Kai Tak Holding Centre located inside the cruise terminal is the largest, with 1,200 beds. All the facilities are able to prescribe the oral anti-Covid drugs molnupiravir and Paxlovid.
Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners dispatched from the mainland will also be on hand to treat symptoms and facilitate patients’ recovery, Lam said.
Meanwhile, home vaccination services provided by the government began on Thursday. Four people aged over 70 and two disabled individuals received jabs at home in a public housing block in Sha Tin, after the building reopened following a lockdown order for compulsory testing.
Officials said the service would be provided to more homebound residents to boost the city’s overall vaccination rate.
