Hong Kong will launch a universal community test scheme to help identify and treat asymptomatic patients infected by the coronavirus and add more beds to handle an anticipated resurgence of cases in winter, government leader Carrie Lam said Friday.
"Testing is regarded as very important...because it is through testing that we could identify as early as possible the infected cases and then put them under isolation and treatment so that there will be no chance for the disease to spread," Lam said.
(Getty/Kyodo)
She said Hong Kong was among the places that saw a resurgence of the disease when economic activities resumed in July after having successfully contained it.
By mid-July, daily cases grew and stayed above 100 for 12 consecutive days. Case numbers dropped to the double digits at the beginning of this month, with 27 cases recorded Friday as the total tally reached 4,631, with 75 deaths.
About 2.5 of every 1,000 people who volunteered to take a virus test were tested positive, while 71 of some 350,000 people from high-risk groups such as elderly home workers, restaurant staff and public transportation drivers have been tested positive for the virus.
"Given the severity of this current wave and the fact that we still have 30 to 40 percent of cases with unknown sources, which means that there is quite a number of silent transmitters in community, so the more we could test, the earlier we could find the remaining outstanding cases," Lam said.
On the government's request, China offered to send expertise and laboratory resources to help Hong Kong run the city-wide scheme and fund the building of extra medical facilities and a new hospital that would provide in total 1,800 additional beds to fight the pandemic.
The voluntary free-for-all virus test will begin Sept. 1 and last for two weeks.
But critics have cast doubt over the scheme's effectiveness as it lacks a targeted approach, while privacy concerns over personal data including DNA records being handled by Chinese scientists may also lead to a low participation rate and render the test meaningless.
Meanwhile, the government has joined a global procurement program that would secure supply of market-ready coronavirus vaccines for about 20 percent of the population, Food and Health Secretary Sophia Chan said, while the rest will be sought from individual vaccine manufacturers and China.
