Free Covid Tests For Tai Po Teachers On Fast Track

Free Covid-19 tests will be offered this week to teachers and staff working at schools and kindergartens in Tai Po where a spate of coronavirus infections have been reported.

Announcing the plan on Tuesday, Acting Chief Executive Matthew Cheung said officials are aware of the concern of schools in the district, and so it has asked the contractor providing virus tests to act quickly.

He said teachers and staff from about 80 schools and kindergartens in Tai Po will be given specimen collection bottles within this week.

A testing scheme is already in place for teachers and staff at kindergartens as well as primary and secondary schools across the city. The Education Bureau has said participation is voluntary.

Cheung also said some 2,600 people have used the mobile testing stations and vans set up by the government in Tai Po in recent days. Health authorities have been handing out testing kits to residents and set up three testing centres there to collect saliva specimens.

Speaking ahead of the weekly Executive Council meeting, Cheung said the response has been positive and the government will review whether there's a need to extend the service.

Cheung also said it is worrying that there are still untraceable Covid cases in the city.

"Over the past week, there are still new cases with unknown sources of infection. That shows that there are still hidden transmission chains in the community," he said.

Cheung announced that social-distancing measures that are set to expire on Friday will be extended for another week. The government said people have become less vigilant after certain restrictions were eased last month.

As for reports that a vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is found to be 90 percent effective, Cheung said it'd be "good news" if there is a safe vaccine for everyone.

He reassured the public that the SAR government has reserved money and made preparatory work for vaccine purchasing.

Health authorities, meanwhile, reported nine new coronavirus cases on Tuesday.

Three of them involved family members of a man who worked on a flight and came down with Covid-19 earlier.

Two others are linked to a man who was infected locally from an unknown source.

There are also four imported cases involving people who flew in from Ecuador, Germany and Indonesia.

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