Hong Kong Logs 628 New Covid Cases

The Centre for Health Protection on Thursday reported 628 new Covid infections – down 40 cases from the previous day.

Officials said 317 of the new infections were confirmed in laboratories and the rest were reported by people who took rapid tests.

The officials also said that of the 250 schools that had resumed classes, six reported Covid infections, involving five members of staff and two students.

The two members of staff worked at the same school, though officials don't believe their cases are linked.

"The Centre for Health Protection will closely monitor the number of positive cases reported to schools by students and staff and see if there's any outbreak or transmission inside the schools," said Albert Au from the centre.

"There's not any hard and fast threshold for class suspensions and we will investigate every outbreak individually to determine the appropriate measures."

Twenty-five of Thursday's new cases involve people who recently returned from countries including Thailand, South Korea and Pakistan.

These infections were detected either at the airport or during quarantine, officials said.

Authorities also reported 26 new deaths, including 18 people who died in the past day – taking the city's death toll in the Omicron outbreak to nearly 9,000.

Separately, officials said they had uploaded the details of almost all Hong Kong's 1.18 million recovered Covid patients onto a platform for these people to download a QR code to use instead of a vaccine pass.

The officials noted that some people were still having difficulty downloading the QR code and called of them to double check their ID card numbers, adding that they should contact the authorities if they have any enquiries.

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Last updated: 2022-MM-DD HKT 17:39

USEFUL LINKS General Covid-19 situation: https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/

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RAT reporting platform:

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Hotline for Covid-positive patients: 1836 115