Experts Warn Covid Gym Cluster Likely To Grow

Health authorities said on Sunday they were expecting more cases to emerge from a growing Covid-19 outbreak originating from a gym cluster in Sai Ying Pun, which has now been linked to more than 100 confirmed cases.

Dr Albert Au, a principal medical and health officer at the Centre for Health Protection, said 10 of Sunday’s 24 newly-confirmed Covid-19 cases were linked to Ursus gym – taking the number of cases in the cluster to 109.

Au said the 10 new cases included six customers and four close contacts of customers and staff.

He said most cases emerged after March 8, and warned that more cases would be uncovered, as the disease has a typical incubation period of up to 14 days.

“Another point is that there are secondary transmissions arising from the customer and staff of Ursus fitness centre,” he said. “It is possible that there will be secondary or even tertiary spread in other places, such as the workplaces or [among] family members.”

“We have to be mindful and need to closely monitor the situation to see if there are further transmissions arising from this cluster.”

The Ursus cluster has also sparked a mini-outbreak at the Harbour School’s Grove Campus in Ap Lei Chau, which has two confirmed cases and one preliminary positive case.

“The first case is a customer of Ursus fitness centre,” said Au. “The other two cases are the colleagues of this index case at the school – the second case is an IT teacher who shares the same classroom with the index case and they have a very close contact.”

“The third case is an art teacher who had contact with the second case inside the IT room for about 10 minutes… so we believe that the transmission is person-to-person and happened inside the IT room.”

All of Sunday’s cases were locally-acquired – 14 of which were linked to previous infections, and 10 without a clear source.

They include a five-year-old girl who attends a kindergarten in Yuen Long. Three teachers and 14 pupils have been sent to quarantine.

Officials said there were at least 20 preliminary positive cases, with around 10 linked to the gym cluster.