HK Records 115 More Covid Cases, All Local

Hong Kong reported 115 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, the 12th consecutive day the figure had exceeded a hundred.

All the cases were locally transmitted, and officials have not yet found the infection source of 36 of them.

The Centre for Health Protection's Chuang Shuk-kwan said a doctor at Union Hospital probably contracted the virus through family members, saying he hadn't gone to work for three days before his onset.

She said seven more cases were linked to the direct marketing firm, Star Global, which sells red wine and cosmetics products at the basement of Yee On Court on Argyle Street. Authorities were also investigating a recent outing in Cheung Chau linked to this cluster.

As for the infection of four people at a general medicine ward of Caritas Medical Centre, health authorities have played down fears of cross-infection.

Sara Ho, a chief manager at the Hospital Authority, believes a doctor and three patients caught the virus through community infection after authorities conducted contact tracing.

She said the doctor might have been infected by family members. Still, three doctors who ate with him were considered close contacts and would be tested.

Ho also apologised for a hiccup involving a woman, who was wrongly sent to the temporary patient-holding facility at AsiaWorld-Expo after her name mistakenly appeared on a list of confirmed patients.

She said after the woman was taken there by ambulance, doctors double-checked and found that she had not tested positive. A subsequent test on her also returned negative after she was sent back to Princess Margaret Hospital.

Ho said the woman put on a surgical mask throughout her time at the Lantau facility, and she didn't contact other patients as she stayed inside her cubicle.

She said even though medics have been busy and they are working in a rush, that's no excuse for the mistake, and officials will review the workflow to find out what went wrong.

Meanwhile, the Hospital Authority urged patients confirmed with coronavirus to cooperate with medics, after a 58-year-old patient fled Tseung Kwan O Hospital on Saturday night on news he'd tested positive.

The man later returned to the hospital and has since been placed in an isolation ward.

As for the overall trend, Chuang insisted it's too soon to say if the number of cases has peaked.

"There may be fluctuations in daily numbers," she said. "You have seen in the past one week we have ups and downs in the numbers, so we cannot (draw conclusions about) the trend at the moment yet."

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