HK Reports 37,529 New Covid Cases And 220 More Deaths

Hong Kong on Saturday reported 37,529 new coronavirus cases and 220 Covid-related deaths.

All but six of the new infections were locally transmitted, and more than 420,000 people have already been confirmed with Covid since the fifth wave erupted.

Even though Saturday’s infection figure was down from those of recent days, Albert Au from the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said the epidemic situation remains severe.

He said the lower figure might just be due to day-to-day fluctuations, or because more people are doing rapid tests instead of PCR tests nowadays.

The Hospital Authority (HA) said 150 Covid patients passed away over the past 24 hours, 137 of which were 65 or above.

One of the dead patients is a 32-year-old woman who was triple-jabbed, but officials suspect she might have acute cancer.

The HA also said there were another 70 deaths which occurred earlier, but hadn’t been reported.

So far, 1,561 patients had died in the latest wave.

Almost 95 percent of them were 60 or above and at least 909 care home residents had passed away due to Covid.

“The residents in these residential care homes are very high-risk persons. If they get the infection, the proportion of having complications or death is the highest among all the high-risk groups or all the population,” Au said.

“So we aim to increase the vaccination coverage rate in these residential care homes as soon as possible. And the government has launched a series of measures, including sending healthcare teams to these residential care homes to provide vaccinations.”

On Saturday, 60 more elderly or disabled care homes reported infections, and about 70 percent of the city's care homes have been hit by Covid so far.