Cluster at elderly care home pushes number of new cases in Hong Kong to 24

Professor Gabriel Leung, a government adviser on the Covid-19 pandemic and dean of the University of Hong Kong’s medical school, suspected the infection at the care home was brought in by staff, and criticised the government over what he saw as the lack of coronavirus testing for workers.

He said more testing would safeguard residents, many of whom are vulnerable, but had not been done properly or sufficiently.

“The previous round of testing residential care home was underpowered to detect silent carriers among the care home workers,” Leung told the Post.

Leung said half or two-thirds of workers should be tested at each care home, instead of the actual rate of an average of three members of staff per facility.

Given the capacity issues, that screening strategy should be rolled out initially in one district before extending to other areas until all of the city’s homes were covered.

Kenneth Chan Chi-yuk, chairman of the Elderly Services Association of Hong Kong, agreed that care home staff could have come into contact with carriers of the virus and brought it into their place of work.

He said many operators had voluntarily banned visits since February but started to relax the restrictions last month.

At least 13 schools have suspended face-to-face classes after reporting links to some new cases.

Leung said increasing the volume of coronavirus testing and introducing measures targeting specific high-risk groups could avoid having to go into full lockdown, which would “impose serious social, economical, psychological and political costs”.

Hong Kong has so far conducted more than 360,000 Covid-19 tests, at a daily average last month of around 3,600 tests.

Health minister Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee said on Tuesday that the public sector, including the health department and the two local medical schools, could add an extra 2,400 tests to its daily quota, starting next month.

That would still fall below the 10,000 daily tests recommended by Leung, and the 7,500 proposed by Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, an infectious diseases expert from HKU who also advises the government on the pandemic.

Leung said the government should leverage the capacity of private labs to boost testing in the city.

Alex Li Wai-chun, chairman of Hong Kong Association of Medical Laboratories, said the 14 private laboratories and hospitals offering Covid-19 tests were potentially able to run 3,000 to 5,000 of them per day when running at full capacity. But the actual number of tests currently undertaken remained unclear.

Cluster at elderly care home pushes number of new cases in Hong Kong to 24

Experts said the previously lenient approach of exempting certain groups of people from quarantine when entering Hong Kong had intensified the risk of contagion in the city, especially following the resumption of more social and economic activities.

Occupations falling into that category include sea crews who are allowed to come to Hong Kong to board vessels in the city that are heading elsewhere.

Data from the Transport and Housing Bureau showed that around 11,730 sea crew members had been exempted from quarantine since February.

According to the maritime trade, the administration had in June reopened the port to allow unrestricted crew changes for cargo and cruise ships visiting from around the world.

A bureau spokeswoman said the suspension of crew changes in the majority of ports amid the Covid-19 outbreak had caused “operational issues” and “humanitarian challenges”.

The latest move was to support the effort in ensuring the smooth flow of global supply chains and the welfare of seafarers.

The spokeswoman added that shipping companies and seafarers who intended to enter Hong Kong for crew changes were requested to comply with a number of exemption conditions, such as immediate and point-to-point transfer between the ship and the airport as far as possible, and self-isolation in case of a genuine need for crew members to stay overnight whilst waiting to board the ships.

But Dr Leung Chi-chiu, chairman of the Medical Association’s advisory committee on communicable diseases, said some sea crew members were from higher-risk areas and could pass on the virus in the community.

Scientists warn coronavirus can travel tens of metres in the air

Last week, nine sea crew members, who entered Hong Kong from Indonesia, Greece and Croatia and stayed one to three days in a hotel in Tsuen Wan, tested positive after boarding a vessel to Ningbo in Zhejiang province. Seven of them did not show symptoms, according to the health authorities.

“They are exempted from quarantine and would stay in accommodation arranged by their employers. There is no [health] supervision during the process of changing crews, or getting on or off a ship,” Leung said.

“As global economic activities like transport and shipping have resumed, Hong Kong has been facing a growing risk of imported infections,” he added.

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US surpasses 3 million coronavirus cases, as White House pushes to reopen schools

US surpasses 3 million coronavirus cases, as White House pushes to reopen schools

Allowing people returning from lower-risk areas to undergo mandatory quarantine at home might have allowed the virus to spread in the community as well, Leung said.

A 46-year-old woman confirmed as infected last week was believed to be infected by her husband and son, who both returned from the US and stayed in the same flat with her during mandatory home quarantine. The woman was linked to the infection of a clinic nurse, who shared a meal together.

Foreign domestic helpers, who are mainly from the Philippines and Indonesia, could also be a potential source of infection, experts warned.

Some 39 foreign domestic helpers have been infected with the coronavirus so far in Hong Kong, including 22 with recent travel history to the Philippines, and another four arriving from Indonesia.

The government said on Tuesday that returning helpers must be quarantined in hotels, with the employers responsible for making the arrangements as well as covering the costs. 

“There are many other more targeted, higher value interventions one can do without imposing strict physical distancing again, and those are testing, tracing and tailored risk mitigation measures like for foreign domestic helpers and nursing homes,” HKU’s Leung said.