HK Stops Double Checking All Self-reported Infections

Health officials on Monday said they would stop giving PCR tests to all those declaring Covid infections after using rapid antigen tests and would carry out spot checks instead.

This came as Hong Kong recorded another 8,488 Covid infections, including 236 imported cases.

Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan from the Centre for Health Protection explained at the daily Covid briefing why they were no longer going to follow up all self-reported infections with a PCR test.

"One explanation why we do that is because of the low false negative rate so far we have tested... and the second of course is because of the rapid increase in the number of tests we have to do so we have to be more efficient in the use of our laboratory testing," she said.

The Hospital Authority said 2,556 Covid patients were being treated in public hospitals.

Seventeen of them were in intensive care, including a 17-month-old boy.

Another four patients with Covid-19 have died. They were aged between 89 and 101.

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