'Lax Contact Tracing, Quarantine Prolonging Surge'

An infectious disease expert said on Tuesday that the transmission of the coronavirus in the community couldn’t be stopped as authorities are lagging behind in their contact tracing and quarantine works.

Speaking on an RTHK programme, Dr Leung Chi-chiu of the Hong Kong Medical Association said this is the main reason why the number of new cases could not come down quickly.

Hong Kong reported 80 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, the first time in almost two weeks that the daily number of infections has dropped below triple digits.

Leung said the drop might only be due to the fact that fewer people visited the doctors over the weekend.

He stressed that although the number of new cases was decreasing slowly in the past few days, Hong Kong is not out of danger yet.

Leung noted there are still a number of clusters, involving some elderly care homes and a direct marketing firm. He said they could trigger another wave of infections and must be handled carefully.

He believed anti-epidemic measures put in place by the government had to be extended for a few more weeks as the Covid-19 outbreak has not come under control.

He agreed that face-to-face lessons should be avoided as schoolchildren could cause “cross-family infections” and make contact tracing more complicated.