HONG KONG, April 9 (Bloomberg): Hong Kong will require all school students to take regular rapid antigen tests after in-person classes resume later this month, as the city gradually relaxes some of the world’s toughest Covid-19 control measures.
Officials are still ironing out details such as how frequent the tests should be conducted and how many positive cases would warrant a school suspension, Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung said on Radio Television Hong Kong on Saturday.
The class-resumption plan will be finalised next week, Yeung said.
Classes may no longer need to be suspended if isolated positive cases are reported because regular tests will allow health authorities to get a better picture of overall infections at schools, Yeung said on the radio program.
Suspensions may still be triggered if the number of infections at a campus reaches a certain threshold, which the government is currently setting, he said.
Yeung told the city’s lawmakers on Thursday that students at senior grades of primary schools will be the first to attend in-person classes, beginning Apr. 19, while junior years will join two weeks later on May 3, the South China Morning Post reported.
Secondary schools and kindergartens will resume face-to-face lessons in phases, starting May 3, acccording to the newspaper.
Hong Kong is gradually recovering from its worst outbreak of Covid since the pandemic began, which spiraled into the world’s deadliest.
The city reported 2,492 positive cases on Friday, compared with five-digit daily infections at the peak of the wave last month.
Officials have lifted a ban of flights from nine countries and will gradually relax many social-distancing measures, including allowing dining-in after 6pm, from Apr 21.
The city’s vaccination rate among children remains low, raising concerns that the virus could spread after school resumes.
About 29% of those aged three to 11 have received two doses of vaccine.
Hong Kong’s health advisers have warned that while the omicron variant is milder than earlier strains, young people’s early stages of physical development may make them more vulnerable to risks of complications after contracting respiratory viruses.
"This slow progress in children taking the vaccine is very worrying because the school is about to resume face-to-face learning after the Easter holiday,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said at her daily Covid briefing on Saturday.
"Although some said that the omicron variant is mild, it could hit a child very, very seriously without vaccination.”
Lam urged parents to arrange for their young children to be vaccinated early as possible.
Covid deaths among children remain rare. Early data suggest that severity with omicron and all other variants increases with age and in the presence of underlying medical conditions, as well as among people who aren’t vaccinated. - Bloomberg
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