HONG KONG, Feb 26 (Bloomberg): Hong Kong is changing its Covid-testing strategy to obtain faster results with self-administered kits as it battles to suppress its worst coronavirus outbreak to date.
The government will allow people with positive results to register the information online for follow-up without seeking confirmation in more sensitive nucleic-acid tests. The move is meant to "avoid resource duplication and time delay,” authorities said in a statement Friday night (Feb 25), promising more detailed information in due course.
"The demand for testing services keeps on growing due to the upsurge of epidemic,” the government said. "Some citizens may not be able to obtain results after having provided their samples for days, and thus feel anxious during the period. This is clearly not a desirable situation.”
The city posted 17,063 new reported virus cases Saturday, following 21,979 reported cases on Friday. Chief Executive Carrie Lam has ordered mandatory testing of the entire 7.4 million population three times in March, a tactic that has been deployed often in mainland China and is set to uncover even more infections.
Most people subject to the compulsory testing will now be able take a rapid test on their own instead of lining up at community testing centers.
Also under the new policy, positive results from nucleic-acid tests conducted by contractors will be immediately deemed as confirmed cases. For those in high-risk and high-exposure groups including airport and quarantine-center workers, compulsory testing frequency will be reduced from once every two or three days to once a week.
Hong Kong is relying on help from the mainland to curtail the current wave. President Xi Jinping recently instructed leaders to make fighting the pandemic their top priority and to take "all necessary measures” to contain the surge.
With the virus rapidly spreading in Hong Kong, the central government will continue to offer its full support for the city’s prevention and control measures, Wu Liangyou, an official at the National Health Commission, said at a briefing in Beijing on Saturday.
The construction of eight makeshift hospitals is in full swing, backed by the mainland, he noted.
From Fe. 25, Bloomberg News is highlighting the number of "reported” cases disclosed by the Hong Kong government instead of the confirmed case number.
This is because the reported cases figure reflects the total number of infections found in the hospital system and detected by private laboratories and doctors in the past 24 hours, making it a more accurate reflection of the state of the outbreak.
The confirmed case number is considered outdated as it contains old cases that authorities were already aware of, and is a reflection of the backlogs at both public and private labs. - Bloomberg
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