CUHK Team To Study Hidden Coronavirus Infections

Researchers at the Chinese University are recruiting 3,000 Hong Kong residents to participate in a study looking into the extent and characteristics of hidden coronavirus infections in the city.

The research team will collect blood and saliva from adult participants and saliva only from children for tests.

Professor Paul Chan, who will lead the study, said the tests are aimed at finding out the proportion of people in Hong Kong who didn’t have any symptom or had very mild symptoms after being infected with the new coronavirus.

Chan said as the city is reporting zero or very low case numbers recently, it’s a good opportunity to carry out the study, which should be done as soon as possible as the data will be useful in helping the city prevent future outbreaks.

“We shall apply serology tests in such a way as to detect hidden infections that occurred in Hong Kong over the last few months. The Information is instrumental in evaluating and further improving our containment strategies to make Hong Kong well prepared for the coming waves of Covid-19,” he said.

The research team said results of antibody tests in some Western countries show the actual infections vastly exceed the official counts.

The researchers are recruiting people of any age, from babies to the elderly, who don’t have any respiratory tract infection symptom to participate in the four-month study. They said people who didn’t travel outside the city in the past six months are preferred.

People who are interested in participating in the study can send a WhatsApp message to 6590-5746 or 6714-0697.