Fifth Moon Palace Diner Tests Preliminary Positive

Health authorities on Sunday reported a preliminary positive Covid-19 case involving a woman who had dined with her husband at the Moon Palace restaurant in Festival Walk, the centre of an Omicron outbreak.

If the 38-year-old woman is confirmed with the virus, she would be the fifth case linked to the cluster.

The fully-vaccinated woman is the wife of a construction worker whose infection was confirmed earlier. The couple had dined together at the restaurant last Monday, sitting 10 metres away from a Cathay Pacific crew member who is confirmed with the Omicron variant and is believed to have spread the virus.

She last went to work on the 15th floor of Sandoz Centre in Tsuen Wan last Thursday, and was sent to the Penny’s Bay quarantine centre on the same day her husband tested positive for the virus. Authorities will issue testing orders for places she visited.

Officials said they had sent 340 people linked to the Moon Palace cluster to a quarantine centre, including 22 restaurant staff and 170 customers. They appealed to people who ate at the restaurant from 1 to 3pm last Monday to contact them.

Meanwhile, health authorities on Sunday reported 26 new Covid infections, of which 25 are imported, while another case was classified as one that’s possibly import-related.

The latest batch of patients is aged between 1 and 61, with 17 of them showing no symptoms.

The patients flew in from India, Canada, the US, Europe, Australia, the UK and the Philippines.

Among the imported cases, a 27-year-old woman living in Kornhill Block, Quarry Bay, had been in Hong Kong during her incubation period. She left Hong Kong on Christmas Eve for Finland and returned via the Netherlands and Thailand on New Year's Eve. She tested positive at the airport upon arrival.

The case which is possibly import-related involves a 50-year-old woman who dined at Moon Palace last Monday. She had earlier been identified as a preliminary positive case and was confirmed to have the virus on Sunday.