Government Aims To Test 10,000 By Midnight In Jordan

Officials on Saturday said around 10,000 residents, living in the part of Jordan currently under 48-hour lockdown, would have to take a Covid-19 test by midnight. It follows a 4 am move by the government to set up a restricted area and test everyone within a two-day period.

By late on Saturday night the government said about 6,900 people had taken a Covid test.

People will not be allowed to leave until most of the testing has been completed and they have a negative result.

The area runs east-to-west from Woosung Street to Battery Street, and north to south from Kansu Street to Nanking Street. There's been a severe outbreak in Jordan, with more than 160 cases in over 50 buildings since the beginning of the month.

Also, anyone who briefly stayed in the area in the past two weeks will also have to get tested.

The Secretary for Home Affairs, Casper Tsui, said there was still a high number of infections in the area and that the virus had been found in sewage samples from several buildings.

He said residents would be asked to take tests in stages at testing stations on Saturday, and they wouldn’t be allowed to leave certain areas without approval before they had received their test results.

He said the government had deployed more than 3,000 staff and it was aiming to complete the operation within 48 hours. The area would also be cleaned and there would be help for ethnic minorities.

The Health Secretary, Sophia Chan, meanwhile, said the risk of transmission was still high and that, in order to completely break the chain of transmission, those who had previously been tested would have to be retested.

Anyone who is found to have the virus will be sent to hospital for isolation and their close contacts will be sent to a quarantine camp, she added.

Chan expects the operation to be completed by 6 am on Monday.

A DAB lawmaker for Kowloon West, Vincent Cheng, said it was too early to say whether the lockdown should be extended to other areas. He called on the government to provide voluntary testing for more residents in Yau Tsim Mong district.

Last updated: 2021-01-24 HKT 04:30