Fewer Covid-19 Tests May Explain Low Infections

Heath officials have admitted that a drop in confirmed Covid-19 cases in Hong Kong over the past few days could be due to the fact that fewer tests were done over the Easter holiday.

Hong Kong recorded five more new coronavirus cases on Monday, bringing the total number of infections in the SAR to 1,009.

It's the second day in a row that the city has posted a single-digit increase in newly confirmed cases. Four new cases were reported on Sunday.

Chuang Shuk-kwan from the Centre for Health Protection said one reason for the low figure in the past few days could be the limited laboratory testing over the Easter holidays.

She said because general government clinics and private doctors have closed due to the holidays, people may have not the chance to turn in their specimen bottles for further virus testing.

Another reason for the low number of confirmed cases, she added, could be because of fewer arrivals to Hong Kong; most cases were imported.

Chuang also said passengers coming from UK, the US and Europe are now required to wait at the AsiaWorld-Expo convention centre on Lantau until they're tested negative for the Covid-19 virus.

She admitted that the policy doesn't include travellers who'd been to those countries but arrived in Hong Kong via a transit flights.

But she stressed that as much as those arrivals don't need to wait at the AsiaWorld-Expo for the results, they're still given a specimen bottle so they can hand over the samples to authorities later.

And with the low number of confirmed cases, Chuang said health officials may suspend the plan that allows people held in quarantine centres to finish their last four days of quarantine at home.

Health officials had earlier planned to allow them to leave the quarantine camps after 10 days, and to spend four days in home quarantine.

But Chuang said with few confirmed cases, along with the low number of close contacts, the demand for quarantine centres may not be as high, so they would consider suspending the plan for a few days.