Coronavirus: Carrie Lam dismisses claims of government’s unpopularity hindering mass testing, hits out at workers’ union

She points to the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, an opposition union formed by frontline staff at public hospitals amid last year’s protests

Chief executive says errors are bound to happen in scientific tests, but ‘worries and fears’ are being spread by people who lack understanding

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A testing facility in Wong Tai Sin. Photo: Winson Wong

Published: 3:44pm, 1 Sep 2020Updated: 9:17pm, 1 Sep 2020

Hong Kong’s embattled leader has shrugged off claims that the unpopularity of her administration is an impediment to the city’s mass testing scheme for Covid-19, hitting back at a union formed by public health workers calling for a boycott.

“I don’t think it has something to do with the government’s popularity,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Tuesday during her weekly press briefing, before pointing the finger back at “people” who lacked understanding of the scheme and tried to cause “worries and fears”.

Lam was referring to the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance (HAEA), an opposition union formed by frontline staff at public hospitals amid last year’s anti-government protests, which joined prominent activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung to call for boycott of the citywide testing days ago.

Carrie Lam has hit out at critics calling for a boycott of the testing programme. Photo: Nora Tam

Calling the test “safe, simple, convenient and quick”, Lam urged the group to view the scheme through an “objective and unbiased” lens, appealing to the public to get tested for “themselves and their loved ones”.

The city on Tuesday launched its voluntary mass testing scheme for more than 7 million people, aimed at tracking down invisible transmission chains in the city amid a fierce but dwindling third wave of coronavirus infections.