Hong Kong residents who test positive during a mass voluntary Covid-19 screening exercise this week can isolate at home rather than in a government facility, provided their living spaces were suitable, health officials have said.
Speaking at her regular Covid-19 briefing on Wednesday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the voluntary at-home rapid antigen test (RAT) scheme would provide a snapshot of how many Hongkongers were infected, while also identifying asymptomatic cases and cutting off transmission chains.
“In the future, it is possible that people who enter certain specified premises may need to use RATs. This exercise will help people who are unfamiliar with RATs learn how to use them,” Lam added. “This is a warm-up exercise for the future use of RATs.”
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Lam had previously urged all Hong Kong residents to take part in the voluntary testing drive from April 8-10 using kits delivered to their homes by the government and to report any infections to authorities within 24 hours. However, she also stressed that she had not given up on plans for mandatory universal testing in the future.
Dr Edwin Tsui Lok-kin, controller of the Centre for Health Protection, said at Wednesday’s briefing that home isolation for mild or asymptomatic cases living in suitable residences would continue. Those who chose to isolate at home would be supported with service packs and could visit designated clinics for medical consultations.
But, he added: “If the patient lives in an unsuitable environment, even if they are in a stable condition, they will still be sent to a community isolation centre.”
Tsui explained that those who lived in subdivided flats, cage homes, or units with shared kitchens and bathrooms would be ineligible for home isolation.
“If there are other people in your household, there should be one room for the infected person,” he said, adding that home isolation would also be inappropriate if there were high-risk people – specifically pregnant women, those aged 70 and up or five and below – living in the household.
Authorities began distributing anti-epidemic packs – containing 20 rapid tests, 20 KN95 masks and two boxes of proprietary traditional Chinese medicine – to nearly 3 million households on Saturday.
Acting Secretary for Home Affairs Jack Chan Jick-chi said on Wednesday that 2.65 million households had already received their anti-epidemic packs, adding that anyone who had not, including those who lived in subdivided units, could go to 89 collection centres by Thursday to pick one up.
Lam has said this week’s mass testing could pave the way for the crucial reopening of the border with mainland China. She also dismissed concerns on Wednesday that people would not report their positive test results to avoid being sent to government facilities.
“It is incorrect to believe that people will not report their infection because they are afraid to be sent to community isolation facilities. Negative reports on isolation facilities are not entirely accurate; we are working hard to improve and provide more people-oriented services [there],” she said.
Lam said she was “very confident” that Hong Kong would be able to deal with any infections uncovered by the voluntary scheme.
“With a combined situation of fewer cases and more capacity, we are very confident that even if this three-day daily RAT [testing] were to give rise to a large number of positive cases, we will be able to handle it.”
She added that the government had sufficient stocks of rapid tests, and could distribute up to 60,000 bags of anti-epidemic supplies a day to families who reported infections. The city’s fleet of designated taxis could also transport patients from their homes to community isolation facilities and clinics.
“We all hope social-distancing measures will be relaxed in phases starting on April 21. Everyone wants to start using their consumption vouchers as soon as possible, dine out in the evening, see more family and friends, and for children to go back to school,” Lam said.
To accomplish that, she continued, “the public only needs to take a rapid test on April 8, 9 and 10 and [report their infections] so we can quickly cut off transmission chains and resume normal life.”
Still, medical experts have raised doubts about the scientific value of the mass screening exercise, given that it relies on less accurate rapid tests and would only offer a partial picture of the city’s pandemic situation, as it would not be able to identify people who had previously been infected and recovered.
But infectious disease specialist Dr Wilson Lam said on Wednesday that the voluntary testing would still be useful if it resulted in particularly infectious patients being diagnosed and isolated.
“Finding the overall infections is not the most important thing. The most important thing is to identify patients with high transmissibility,” he said. “If we can identify those patients, the pandemic will not resurge when the social-distancing measures are relaxed [on April 21].”
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Meanwhile, Ivan Lin Wai-kiu, of the Society for Community Organisation, said some residents of subdivided flats did not receive the government’s anti-pandemic packages, and some units with as many as 20 tenants were forced to share a single one.
He added that although the 89 stations had been set up for people to collect the supply kits if none were distributed to their doorstep, they might be closed before many blue-collar workers finished for the day.
Separately, passenger data from the MTR, franchised buses and outlying island ferries shows the number of people going out and using public transport climbed from 4.78 million on March 21 to 5.44 million on April 1.
Meanwhile, data from the University of Hong Kong shows the real-time “effective reproductive number”, or R value, for Covid-19 cases had also risen by 59 per cent, from 0.3859 on March 21 to 0.6129 on March 29.
The R value represents the average number of people a Covid-19 patient will transmit the virus to, with an R value of one indicating each person who contracts the virus will infect one other. The R value increases as patients come into contact with more people, leading to more viral transmissions.
Additional reporting by Sammy Heung
More from South China Morning Post:
- Coronavirus: ‘test yourselves for 3 days in a row next week’ – Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam urges residents to use rapid kits for better picture of health crisis
- How to give yourself a Covid-19 nasal swab test: gently. A nosebleed is unlikely despite Hong Kong actor’s ordeal
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