Covid Cases Rise Among Passengers Of Thursday Flight

Hong Kong on Saturday recorded another three coronavirus cases among people flying home from abroad, as officials said about a fifth of all passengers on one recent flight are now known to have been infected.

The Centre for Health Protection said the latest patients returned from Pakistan on Qatar Airways flight QR818 on Thursday.

Thirteen other passengers on the same flight had already tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday.

Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the centre’s communicable disease branch, said the new patients include a father and son whose preliminary tests were uncertain, but who were subsequently confirmed to be infected.

Officials couldn’t collect a saliva sample from another patient, a one-year-old boy, on Thursday. But tests on his throat swab later showed he is also infected with the virus. The boy's mother had already tested positive.

The centre said almost one-fifth of the 83 passengers on Thursday's QR818 flight have now been confirmed as carriers of the virus.

Four flight attendants who came into close contact with the infected passengers have been sent to a quarantine centre, while eight other crew members have tested negative for the virus.

The latest cases take the total number of infections confirmed in Hong Kong to 1,082. There have been four fatalities in the SAR since the pandemic erupted in Wuhan late last year.