Covid Variant Poses 'less Risk To Mall-users': Expert

A DNA specialist says people who visited a Tai Po mall where Hong Kong's first patient infected with the Delta variant worked should be at a lower risk of being infected compared to his colleagues.

Speaking on a radio show, Gilman Siu from the Department of Health Technology and Informatics at Polytechnic University said it's almost certain that man got infected at the airport, where he also worked, as the genome sequencing of his variant matched three infected arrivals from Indonesia.

One of the 27-year-old colleagues, who also provided customer services at Uptown Plaza in Tai Po, was confirmed to be infected with a mutant strain on Sunday.

The building where she lives, Block 10 at Tai Po Centre, was locked down overnight for testing, but no new coronavirus cases were found among some 390 residents.

But Siu said unlike the man's colleagues, the mall's visitors would not have had extended contact with him.

"Customers wear masks too. The whole mall has also been put under a mandatory testing order now," he noted.

Siu warned, however, that the more infectious mutant strain might have already entered the community, as the man had a high viral load and he developed symptoms 10 days after he caught the virus at the airport and could have spread the virus during the incubation period.

The variant was first detected in India, but has been identified in at least 92 countries.

Experts believe it’s about 60 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant which previously dominated new infections.

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